Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Looking on the bright side

Posted in:

Illinois

* Becky Vevea at WBEZ has an excellent look at the history of Chicago Public Schools. I’m probably excerpting more than I should but you should still go read the whole thing…

There’s a growing body of evidence that Chicago’s schools are improving quickly and — for certain populations of students — doing better than other districts. U.S. News and World Report just released its annual rankings of the nation’s best high schools: Six of the top 10 in Illinois are in CPS and another three in the top 20.

“When the state’s not doing well or not making great progress, there’s always some number of people who say, ‘Well maybe that’s just because Chicago’s not doing well. Maybe they’re just dragging down the rest of the state,’” says Robin Steans, executive director of Advance Illinois, a bipartisan group focused on improving the state’s education policy. “What we found is that’s not true. Chicago has made steady gains both academically and in terms of some critical outcomes, like graduation.”

Steans’ group looked at scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, from 2003 to 2013 and found Chicago students grew 11 points on the 8th grade math test and 7 points on the 4th grade reading test. The state grew just 7 points and 3 points, respectively.

Advance Illinois also compiled state graduation data from 2014 to compare Chicago with other districts for certain subgroups of students. They found that Latino students enrolled in CPS are more likely to graduate high school than their counterparts in many suburban districts, including Maine Township High Schools and Evanston Township High School.

“It’s so counterintuitive to what they think they know about Chicago that they just disregard it,” Steans says of the data. “There’s been so much noise, with the teachers strike and the school closings. The political heat and noise tends to crowd out what’s actually beneath and behind that.”

Paul Zavitkovsky, a leadership coach and assessment specialist at the Urban Education Leadership Program at the University of Illinois - Chicago, may be able to help. In a forthcoming study, Zavitkovsky’s findings mirror what Advance Illinois found.

“On an apples-for-apples basis, if you compare yourself with your counterparts based on race and socioeconomic status in other parts of the state, you have a higher probability of having a better educational experience in Chicago,” he says.

But Zavitkovsky goes further. He shared a preliminary version of the report with WBEZ that showed students in the 75th percentile for 4th grade math achievement grew 20 points between 2003 and 2013. The performance of that subgroup in the rest of the state grew only 3 points in the same amount of time.

Again, go read the whole thing and discuss below.

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, May 18, 15 @ 9:48 am

Comments

Interesting argument. We always pine for the good ole days, but when you crunch the numbers, they weren’t always so good. 40 years ago, the murder rate in Chicago was twice as high as it is today. You wouldn’t know that by turning on the nightly news.

Comment by FTR Monday, May 18, 15 @ 9:57 am
I hope those scores aren’t higher by using the Atlanta method.

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, May 18, 15 @ 10:32 am
Like state employees Chicago schools have been a convenient whipping boy for some who have ulterior motives.

Comment by Wordslinger Monday, May 18, 15 @ 10:45 am
Once again, the good ole days tend to be the days when there was actually some money that could go towards the issue at hand (schools in this case).

Comment by From the 'Dale to HP Monday, May 18, 15 @ 10:49 am
- VanillaMan - Monday, May 18, 15 @ 10:32 am:

Nice drive by.

To the story, WBEZ does a great job explaining why it’s so hard to compare across eras while also touching on the fact that in qualitative ways schools are leaps and bounds above what they were decades ago. Particularly with discipline and race, we have a long way to go, and although many places are not achieving their mission of educating students, at least we are in a position where it is not radical to expect students to receive an education regardless of what color their skin is.

Comment by Precinct Captain Monday, May 18, 15 @ 10:55 am
New Trier is one of the top 10 high schools in the country and yet on that list is 21st-in the state. Please, and Glenbrook North is one of the better ones in the country and also in the 20s in the state?

Comment by Shore Monday, May 18, 15 @ 10:57 am
=New Trier is one of the top 10 high schools in the country and yet on that list is 21st-in the state=

I know a Carhartt-lovin’ man who turned down a New Trier education for his daughter to clout her into CPS.

Comment by Carhartt Representative Monday, May 18, 15 @ 11:33 am
Scoring can be manipulated and students can graduate without knowing how to read. Sadly, I don’t trust the CPS with their history of both trying to save their own skin and dumbing down the schools. All one needs to do is listen to the teachers interviewed on the news and hear their incorrect English or interview the students. There may be some good things happening, but by and large, I don’t believe the hype.

Comment by The obvious Monday, May 18, 15 @ 11:41 am
=All one needs to do is listen to the teachers interviewed on the news and hear their incorrect English or interview the students.=

Do they have faulty sentence structure when they talk? Nothing can be more infuriating than people who don’t follow the rumors of grammar like using parallel structure in their sentences.

Comment by Carhartt Representative Monday, May 18, 15 @ 12:23 pm
Sorry that was correct English on my part. Might want to study your English again.

Comment by The obvious Monday, May 18, 15 @ 1:52 pm
- The obvious -

The passive voice is bad form.

Comment by Precinct Captain Monday, May 18, 15 @ 2:54 pm
Well I’m not the teacher in the family, but I also never accused you of bad grammar. I simply said that it’s bad grammar to have non-parallel structure in your sentences. For instance, if you had a verb phrase joined with a simple verb that would be considered bad structure.

Comment by Carhartt Representative Monday, May 18, 15 @ 3:23 pm
The obvious:

Piling on: the correct possessive pronoun for CPS is “its” not “their”. CPS is singular, not plural.

Also, “the” obvious, it is simply “CPS.” Not “the CPS.”

- The Juvenal (not to be confused with all of the other Juvenals out there.)

Comment by Juvenal Monday, May 18, 15 @ 3:55 pm
===Piling on===

Move along, please. Everybody.

Comment by Rich Miller Monday, May 18, 15 @ 3:57 pm
I think the original point was that Chicago Public Schools aren’t the Dickensian dystopia that lazy reporters and political yakkers like to make them out to be for tneir own purposes.

Gee, is it possible that it’s a little more complicated than that?

Apparenly, no one read the link. Too bad. Vevea did some stellar journalism, which ain’t in surplus these days.

No one from CPS or the teachers’unions bothered to comment? Get in the ballgame, for crying out loud. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re in the barrel. P.R. should be part of the game plan.

Diane Ravitch has been making many of the same points for some time.

Comment by Wordslinger Monday, May 18, 15 @ 4:56 pm
I don’t know if it’s the golden era of CPS or if expectations have changed. Society has changed. Many families are headed by college grads unlike the families of my youth. These parents are the ones who are pushing CPS.

Comment by Emily Booth Monday, May 18, 15 @ 11:34 pm
=Apparenly, no one read the link. Too bad. Vevea did some stellar journalism, which ain’t in surplus these days.=

Veve and Lenz at WBEZ do excellent education reporting. However, the graduation rate at CPS is a tricky stat as a previous WBEZ investigation uncovered. http://www.wbez.org/news/same-diploma-different-school-111581

Comment by Carhartt Representative Tuesday, May 19, 15 @ 8:41 am
Oops, I meant to say Lutton not Lenz

Comment by Carhartt Representative Tuesday, May 19, 15 @ 1:13 pm