Mike Viola – Chicago Tribune https://www.chicagotribune.com Get Chicago news and Illinois news from The Chicago Tribune Fri, 07 Jun 2024 20:16:18 +0000 en-US hourly 30 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.4 https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/favicon.png?w=16 Mike Viola – Chicago Tribune https://www.chicagotribune.com 32 32 228827641 Mike Viola: Mayor Brandon Johnson’s education policy should take a lesson from other cities https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/06/10/opinion-brandon-johnson-education-policy-colorado/ Mon, 10 Jun 2024 10:00:03 +0000 https://www.chicagotribune.com/?p=17273321 Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson may have temporarily paused his crusade against selective enrollment schools, but there is still a long way to go to secure education options in Illinois.

Last month, Johnson succeeded in getting Illinois Senate President Don Harmon to stop a bill that would have stripped the Chicago Board of Education of its ability to close schools, including charters and selective enrollment public schools. Although Johnson reversed his and his allies’ prior statements in pledging not to touch selective enrollment schools until a fully elected school board assumes power in 2027, charters are still at risk. 

These alternatives to neighborhood schools have long been a lifeline for high-achieving students, especially those whose home addresses would otherwise trap them in failing schools. The mayor’s pledge to keep selective enrollment schools is welcome. However, the continued risk to charter schools and the fact that the issue reached the state legislature in the first place highlight a bigger-picture problem for Chicago: Leaders regularly side with progressive dogma over the well-being of their young residents. 

Charters and selective enrollment high schools have consistently outperformed the average among Chicago Public Schools. In the 2022-23 academic year, the district had a graduation rate of 85%. Of the city’s 42 charter schools, 28 beat the districtwide graduation rate, as did 10 out of 11 selective enrollment schools, according to the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project. Additionally, every selective enrollment school had a higher college enrollment rate than the citywide average.

Unsurprisingly, students who get into schools with higher admissions standards also have better academic outcomes. However, these schools’ resources and more challenging academics can prepare talented students from disadvantaged neighborhoods for longer-term success in ways that some neighborhood schools cannot. Cutting back on charters and selective enrollment schools would reduce options for parents concerned about the quality of their kids’ education.

Instead of mimicking doctrinaire progressive talking points or yielding to the demands of the Chicago Teachers Union, Chicago policymakers should learn from cities that have successfully tackled similar education challenges, even in progressive political environments.

Austin, Texas, has implemented specialized programs for high-achieving students and magnet schools for specific interests such as science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, and the arts. These serve a similar role to selective enrollment and charters in Chicago, matching students to more challenging coursework and a wider range of resources than are available in neighborhood schools. Some of these even allow students to earn college credits while still in high school, increasing college readiness and reducing future costs. 

The Austin district’s emphasis on innovative models yielded a 96.3% graduation rate in 2021, putting Chicago’s graduation rate to shame. Further, inequality along racial lines was strikingly low in Austin: The lowest graduation rate for any group was 95.2% for Hispanic students. On the other hand, in Chicago, where traditional schools dominate, Black students lag the district graduation rate by nearly 5%. For all the talk from Chicago politicians about closing achievement gaps, Austin’s innovative schools are actually doing it, and Chicago should heed its example.

Since the early 2000s, Denver — also known for its progressive politics — has been an innovator in using charter schools to provide more options to families. Charters, then and now, have performed better than state and local averages. In 2023, a study by the University of Arkansas found stronger educational outcomes in both reading and math in Denver’s charter schools for a lower cost per pupil than traditional public schools. Looking at students’ lifetime earnings, the study estimated that charter school graduates had a 58% higher return on the cost of their education than traditional public school students. 

These more recent successes come in spite of the Denver school board’s vote to impose various district and teachers union rules on charters. Nevertheless, the schools’ academic independence has worked out in students’ favor, even with the district’s interference in bureaucratic matters. Chicago’s own education bureaucracy and teachers union are themselves forces to be reckoned with, but Denver is proof that educational innovation can overcome those obstacles.

Johnson’s reluctant pledge may take nontraditional schools out of the crosshairs briefly. However, this won’t last in the long term unless Chicago learns to put the party line aside and explore the effective education methods that have served other cities well — even progressive ones.

Mike Viola is a state beat fellow at Young Voices.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

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Mike Viola: Bravo to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s embrace of free market economics for housing https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/03/opinion-chicago-brandon-johnson-housing-policies/ Fri, 03 May 2024 10:00:04 +0000 https://www.chicagotribune.com/?p=15894574 Rent in Chicago is climbing at record rates. As of March, median one-bedroom rental prices saw a 21% year-over-year increase, even as real estate markets have slowed down and home prices have stalled. Meanwhile, overall demand for rentals is in decline: Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Chicago’s population was shrinking, but since then, the city has been losing residents left and right.

More shocking than the stubborn rental prices, however, is that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has a proposal that may actually do something about it.

Johnson’s plans to deal with housing have generally taken the restrictive route that got Chicago into this mess in the first place. His Bring Chicago Home proposal, which failed as a referendum in March, would have nearly tripled the real estate transfer tax on properties selling for more than $1 million and up to $1.5 million while quadrupling it for properties selling for more than that. Soaking the rich, whom Illinois has a hard enough time keeping around, was never going to improve housing for everyone else. Rather, it would have disincentivized further development and held large commercial and multifamily properties hostage to the status quo.

Since the dismissal of Bring Chicago Home, Johnson has adopted a new approach. Proposals in his new “Cut the Tape” report take the opposite philosophical stance to his failed tax hike. The mayor calls for “a more effective and streamlined development process,” seeking to reduce time spent on onerous bureaucratic procedures and suggesting that they will bring more units of “affordable, supportive, and market-rate housing” along with citywide commercial development.

This is a welcome change. Johnson suddenly sounds less like the Chicago machine and more like the Chicago school of economics, suggesting that perhaps he’s realized that supply available to renters who pay out of pocket is declining for reasons that can be squarely blamed on state and local government. Chicago’s bloated regulatory regime means only big developers can afford to build, and even they have limited options with strict zoning laws and building stipulations. This biases new builds toward luxury rentals — a fact counterproductively decried by housing activists — because that’s the easiest way for developers to recoup their high overhead costs. Now, even those builds are slowing down, and Illinois ranks last in the nation in the construction of new homes.

As promising as Cut the Tape is, we should not expect it to solve Chicago’s housing problems without broader changes to the city’s bad habits. Many of its prescriptions are straightforward: Expedite approvals, eliminate redundant environmental reviews, loosen zoning restrictions and remove parking minimums. However, if the mayor appoints only partisans and allies to related positions and working groups, he runs the risk of creating more tape.

Similarly, the positive effects of the plan could be cannibalized if Johnson follows through with more typical proposals. Recently, the City Council approved the mayor’s plan to borrow $1.25 billion to build affordable housing — something best left to the market. It also gave the mayor $70 million in migrant aid, creating artificial demand by attracting immigrants to Chicago while taking away from the market-rate housing supply, even as the mayor rejects nongovernmental help with housing migrants.

Finally, the mayor’s old friends at the Chicago Teachers Union are asking for their own housing subsidy, which would only further distort the housing market.

Despite everything that could go wrong, it’s worth celebrating the mayor’s unusual foray into free market economics. He’s done us the favor of creating a specific policy checklist, and it’s the voters’ responsibility to make sure he follows through.

Mike Viola is a State Beat Fellow at Young Voices and a Chicago landlord who would charge less in rent if he could afford to.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

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