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Not quite the fight that CPS is making it out to be

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Illinois

Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool opened a new front in the city’s battle with Gov. Bruce Rauner on Wednesday, lambasting a state board’s “shameful decision” to overturn the district’s plan to close three charter schools at the end of the school year.

Claypool said CPS will challenge the vote by the Illinois State Charter School Commission to allow the South Side charter schools to remain open and to operate outside district supervision. Claypool asked state lawmakers to rein in a “rogue” commission.

“Once again, Gov. Rauner is relegating poor minority children to a second-class education,” Claypool told reporters during a brief appearance at a Pilsen neighborhood school. “An unaccountable commission appointed by the governor should not assert local control and should not allow quality standards to measure the academic performance of our children to be thrown aside.”

* But scroll through the Sun-Times story and you’ll eventually see this…

After abruptly taking the helm at CPS last year following a contracting scandal, Claypool moved quickly to beef up district policy monitoring the quality at the district’s 130 charter schools. Within a month of policy changes, CPS notified several charters that they were on a closing list.

State commissioners — even two who typically vote against charters — accused CPS of moving too quickly to give Betty Shabazz’s Sizemore campus, Amandla Charter High School and Bronzeville Lighthouse Charter School a fair shake and then voted 6-0 Tuesday to approve the schools’ appeals to stay open. The commissioners even agreed that the schools had serious academic problems to overcome. […]

“The actions of CPS shows why you need a commission to provide a safeguard against random actions by a school district,” said Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and a former commissioner. “I think CPS really kind of caused this problem by changing the [closing] criteria at the last minute and put the schools the families and the commission in a very bad spot.”

Emphasis added.

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 11:30 am

Comments

== “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…

Comment by Anonymous Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 11:36 am
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.

Comment by Former Hoosier Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 12:05 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.

Comment by Maximus Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 12:43 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.

Comment by Juvenal Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 1:53 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

Comment by NSideLady Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 2:03 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.

Comment by Quality charters supporter Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 2:53 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.

Comment by Carhartt Representative Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 2:57 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.

Comment by Due Process for All Students Thursday, Mar 3, 16 @ 7:36 pm