During his campaign for mayor, Brandon Johnson put out a statement saying that he would not get rid of Chicago’s selective-enrollment schools. Those of us who kept receipts know that precise words released by his campaign were, “a Johnson administration would not end selective enrollment at CPS schools.”
At the time, Johnson and his Chicago Teachers Union backers well knew that any attempt to mess with Chicago’s superb little clutch of 11 selective-enrollment high schools — Northside College Prep, Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, John Hancock College Prep, Jones College Prep, Lane Tech, Lindblom Math and Science Academy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School, Walter Payton College Prep, South Shore International College Prep, Westinghouse College Prep and Whitney M. Young Magnet School — would have been met with howls of parental anguish, a surge in business for companies offering moving services from Chicago to the suburbs and voters throwing their support elsewhere.
But Johnson’s in office now, in case you haven’t noticed. And see if you can square that campaign commitment with the language of a resolution up for a Thursday vote by Johnson’s school board.
The resolution is fertilizing the soil for a five-year “transformational” strategic plan, apparently coming this summer from Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez. The resolution calls for “a transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.”
That’s obfuscating language, of course, which is this administration’s preferred mode of communication, especially when it comes to launching trial balloons like this one.
“Transformation” is a Pravda-esque word for remaking something the way the people in power want it to be remade. “Transition away” minimizes change that many people, especially working-class Chicagoans of color, don’t want. And, yet worse, the resolution accepts the false binary that selective-enrollment schools hurt neighborhood schools, when a decent system would improve the latter even as it retains the former.
Some reports Wednesday suggested, without irony, that it was not the administration’s intention to “dismantle” charter or selective-enrollment schools, as if the Chicago Teachers Union had not had those hated charter schools in its sights for years. And we all know who put this mayor in office.
So who could possibly read that resolution and believe that selective-enrollment high schools now can breathe easy?
There are some spectacularly weaselly words in play here. You can keep, say, Northside College Prep and not “dismantle” it, but everyone knows that the moment it ceases to be a selective-enrollment school, privileging (often low-income) kids who want to learn, it ceases to be Northside College Prep as currently known.
And how is it currently known? As one of the top (and most diverse) high schools in America, a National Blue Ribbon School as designated by the U.S. Department of Education, a school where state test scores have shown 94% of students are at least proficient in math and 95% in reading.
Worse, this misguided strategy is hidden behind seeking “community” input.
“This plan needs to be guided and informed by the community,” board President Jianan Shi told the Chicago Sun-Times. “The goal is that we’re able to change (the) current competition model so that students are not pitted against one another, schools are not pitted against one another.”
This is nonsensical, self-contradictory and disingenuous blather.
If you genuinely desire community input to guide and inform you, then you present the issue to the community without bias and solicit views. You don’t state the policy and try to get it passed in spirit by a governing body first. And then see what “the community” wants to do. And then act surprised and shocked if “the community” aligns with the goals of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Even some former Soviet apparatchiks would have blushed at that brazen tactic. It’s anti-Democratic and un-American.
Johnson’s people can call this resolution a roadmap, or a transition plan, or a framework, or whatever they want. They must have a very low opinion of Chicagoans’ intelligence. People will see what is going on here.
And we have more news for Shi: The U.S. is a democracy that operates under a free-market system. Such a system is necessary for personal freedom and economic growth, but it is necessarily based on competition. What does Shi think selective colleges and universities are doing in their admissions process if they are not pitting one student against another? What does he think other countries that better educate all their kids are doing?
These days there are lots of ways for a diverse array of students to make their overall cases to fine schools and employers, and that’s a good thing. We don’t all start out in the same place, and governments always have a job to do in ensuring fairness and equal opportunity and in encouraging those from more challenging environments to succeed.
But reading and math competence still affect global success, and so they should. Telling kids that everyone is the same and belongs in the same classroom, and then impeding smart kids in some misguided notion of “equity,” only will further harm the city of Chicago, where this administration already has done plenty of damage. Kids know the truth.
This debate already has played out on the East and West coasts. The evidence presents that parents, especially low-income parents of color, want to weigh the quality of schools and have a choice as to where to send their kids, and that anyone with the capacity to leave will exit if it is not provided to them.
Let’s be clear: The selective-enrollment high schools are stars in the CPS firmament. All 11 of them. They are going to need defenders.
Chicago has struggled for decades to keep its vibrant middle class from fleeing to the suburbs when their kids reach school age. The offering of more choices in education, a long-time city policy, hasn’t gone perfectly, but it’s inarguable in our view that without those choices Chicago would be in far worse shape.
The Chicago Board of Education should vote this resolution down Thursday.
If they don’t, its adoption will signal to savvy, education-focused parents to start looking for homes or apartments in the suburbs. Second, it will cause needless stress to lower-income folks who fight tooth and nail to get the best possible education for their gifted kids. And third, it’s plain dishonest communication.
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