Chicago Public League Sports Blog

New CPS Admissions Policy Explained

Warning: the following video is filled with statistics and politico talk.While it is not directly sports related. It does explain a little bit about this new controversial CPS admissions policy that will affect everyone - includes athletes that can get into the selective schools.

CPS In the news.... 12/15/09

* There is no tougher boys basketball conference in the state than the Red-South. Every conference game is a battle. The Red-South includes Julian, #2 Morgan Park, #3 Simeon, #8 CVS, #9 Brooks, and Harlan. #2 Morgan Park struggled to beat Harlan 58-57. #8 CVS had to go to overtime to overtake Brooks 62-57. CVS beat Simeon twice last year. Harlan is overlooked by everyone. They play in the upcoming Jack Tosh Holiday Tournament at York High School and Harlan is not even seeded in the top 8.

* Kelly slammed Mather 67-9 in a triangular wrestling meet with DeLaSalle. I'm not really sure why Kelly beat Mather by so much. Mather and Kelly along with Lane are one of three teams contending for the CPS wrestling title.

* Carver community members failed in their attempt to change their name from Carver Military Academy back to George Washington Carver High School. story

* State Senator James Meeks traveled back to Winnetka earlier this month to try to further advance education funding reform. According to Meeks: At that school (Fenger), 96 percent of entering freshmen are reading at or below the fifth-grade level.

"How do you get out of elementary school reading at the fifth-grade level?" said Meeks, citing a generational cycle that must be broken. "At some point it has to stop.   I may not agree on Meeks on every point. But he is one of the few politicians that looks at things from a student and parent point of view. Come on something has to change when some CPS schools are experiencing this level of failure. I'm not sure more taxes or more government is the solution. But something has to be done.  WinnetkaTalk Story

Meeks brought busloads of CPS parents and students last year to New Trier. I could not speak to Meeks directly, but I did get to interview Pastor Ira Ackree on his take on what CPS parents can do:

Take Out Your Wallets.....Public Boarding Schools in the CPS?

First they gave free breakfast, then they want to expand teaching radical topics like transgender studies, labor unions, and imperialism; then they are controlling admissions to selective enrollment schools. Now they want to take more of your money to pay for free boarding schools in the CPS.

In an idea in which I can only call insane, a radical educator named Leah Marshall is taking the first steps to create a new CPS charter school called EARN Academy. Her goal is to create the city's first public residential school for underprivileged students.

Regular CPS charters schools already cost the CPS about $7,500 per student. By contrast the EARN Academy would need about $38,000 per student.

I think this is really going to far. Before anyone attacks me, I am for helping under privileged students. But is this the right way to do it? I grew up in the North Side of Chicago. My mother still lives and owns a house on the northside where my parents have paid property taxes over the years. She has seen her property taxes raise seemingly every year - to pay for automatic pay increases to union educators, free breakfast to every CPS student, teachers unions, and other questionable spending.

My point is that, while it seems morally right to help underprivileged students, the raising of property taxes from one set of Chicagoans to pay for the another set of Chicagoans, is not right. What they are doing is robbing one person to pay for another. To me, they are increasingly enslaving one group and redistribute it to another group. To me, there is something morally wrong with doing that.

Some may say, "Neil, what does this have to do with sports?". I think a lot. See for every dime the CPS spends on free food and free housing to someone, that's less of a dime that can be spent on sports. So the next time you hear someone complaining about lack of funding of sports in the CPS, you can tell them it's not a money issue- we have the money. It's an issue of deciding where to spend the money. The CPS seems to be increasingly spending it on things not directly related to a child's education.

This woman.....

This woman....

lives in the south shore community of Chicago,

raised her two children with her lifelong husband Fraser,

she worked as a secretary for Spiegel's catalog store and her husband was a long time city water plant employee,

together their family had a good enough income to raise her two children,

her daughter got accepted into a CPS high school and has a successful career.

Click here for a picture of her and her daughter

Assault on Achievement

Now that race has been eliminated as a selection factor to get into a CPS selective enrollment school, CPS officials want to use socio-economic factors as a major factor for admission. According to a Sun-Times article, the 5 factors that will be put on a December 16 proposal will be:

median family income, average adult education level, single-parent households, owner-occupied homes and homes in which a language other than English is spoken.

The article goes further and states that:

At selective-enrollment elementary and high schools, half of all seats would go to the highest-scoring students citywide. The remaining half would be equally divided among the four economic tiers, in rank order of scores within each tier, as long as such students met minimum cutoff scores.

I'll sum up what the article states. Half of the students will be admitted based solely on high test scores. After that you will get "extra credit or bonus points" for certain items out of the students control.

• Income - the poorer your family the more likely you will get in.
• Average adult education - if your household has too many college educated people, that will be a strike against you. But if your parents are high school drop outs, that gives you extra credit.
• Owner-occupied homes - If your parents own your home, that's bad. If they rent, or better yet on some kind of government assisted housing, that's good.
• Homes in which language other than English is spoken - You better hope that English is not the main language in your household.
• Single-parent household - You will get extra-credit if your parents are split up and you live in a single parent household.

Can anyone see something wrong with this new proposed admissions process?

If your parents did everything right: stayed married, worked hard in their life to earn an above average income, educated themselves with college degrees, and home, then YOU will get penalized.

To me, this is a clear assault on achievement.

Lane Tech Grad and political blogger Esther Cepeda calls this an "economic tier scheme" and that

"All parents want to believe that if they work hard, they can get a decent education for their kids. City parents know it’s a gamble between a bad or so-so school; short of leaving town, all Chicago parents just want an equal chance at some of the better schools regardless of their income or race.

The CPS School Board – which was appointed to represent all parents, not just the financially neediest ones – must ensure they get their fair shot."

Related

Are CPS teachers becoming too radical?
Admissions Overhaul
Principal Pick
What message are we sending?
Race Based Selective Enrollment on The Way Out

Are CPS teachers becoming too radical?

Keep radicalism out of the CPS!

I am a large advocate that the primary purpose of schools should be teaching traditional topics. That is, the three R's - reading, writing, and arithmetic. In other words teach history, math, English, and other subject that will prepare you for college, work, and learning in general. Also, sports and extracurricular activities are important to maintain balance.

I think most parents and students would agree with me.

However, I have discovered a very disturbing trend. There are a group of administrators and teachers that believe

"a good education should teach people—particularly low-income youth and youth of color—to understand and challenge the injustices their communities face."

One group, called the Teachers for Social Justice have teachers and administrators from CPS schools like Farragut, Little Village, UIC, Social Justice High School, ACE Tech, Manley, Collins, Uplift presenting in a conference topics like:

Chicago Student Bill of Rights
GLTB Awareness (Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Bi-Sexual)
Oppression, Equality, Justice
Labor Unions
Criminalization of Youth
Hip Hop Arts
Restorative Justice
Imperialism and Military Recruitment
Gentrification
Developing the Young Civic Leaders, Activists, and Policy Makers

I don't know about everyone else, but if I were a CPS parent I would keep my children far away from those radical topics?

I am all for people reading and thinking anyway they want to, but please keep it  private and thus far away from the CPS!!!!

Related

There's No Such Thing as a Free Breakfast
Hey Duncan Keep Politics Out of the CPS
The Great Excuse
1 Track for 1 Million People
The New Westinghouse High School: What will $109 Million Buy You!! Apparently Not a Lot
Uncomfortable Question
New Trier 12, Lane Tech 2

Bring on the computers

Now a computer may help determine what CPS selective enrollment school you get into.

 

This is getting more bizarre all the time. As part of the CPS admissions process overhaul, CPS CEO Ron Huberman said a computer will help assign applicants to the highest ranked school they qualify for on their list.

See in the past an 8th grader could apply to several selective schools at the same time. As part of the process, the 8th grader would rank their school choice in order. So if her choices were Payton, Northside, Lane Tech, and then Jones. She would have to rank the schools in order of her preference. Then admissions would be determined basked on her rank. Now, if I am interpreting Huberman's statement correctly, a computer will help assign an applicant to the highest ranked school they qualify for. So if you don't qualify for Payton you may get into Lane Tech. I haven't thought about this completely, but all of this complication makes things more confusing.

To me it just seems the CPS is going in the direction of adding more layers of complication, government and costs. Those are things we don't need more of.

Related

Admissions Overhaul
Principal Pick
What message are we sending?
Race Based Selective Enrollment on The Way Out

What message are we sending?

In the recent weeks the Chicago Public Schools has dramatically changed some factors for children and teens to get into the prized Chicago Public selective and Magnet Schools. There are pros and cons to each of the changes and I will try to address each side of the equation. The reasons for these controversies is that the CPS cannot please everyone. In recent years too much weight has been placed on race to a point where white teens had to almost score a perfect on the selective enrollment entrance exam to qualify for a spot at Northside, Whitney, or Payton. On the other hand, with a federal judge getting rid of the racial mandate in the Selective enrollment process, diversity needs to be maintained at these schools to give disadvantage kids an equal opportunity. Although some might say that the best score should get the spot, if the CPS worked this way its top schools would soon look like New Trier or Stevenson.

    New factors that Magnet and Selective Enrollment Schools will use in making their acceptance decisions besides the raw score will include socioeconomics, siblings already present at the school, and the neighborhood the student hails from. I believe the neighborhood issue will be an influence more in magnet schools than the selective enrollment. However, to make up for the racial mandate socioeconomic diversity will take its place. These rules need to be used with discretion. There cannot be a huge disparity between an average white's score or black's in order to get into a supreme school. What message is this sending to our generation? Does being a smart, disadvantaged or a minority teen automatically qualify you for a spot when there are others above you who may not be disadvantaged? As long as these factors exist controversies will always surround the CPS Selective Enrollment process.

- written by Jonathon Kamel,(Payton, class of 2012)

More info on being a CPSfan volunteer blogger

- written by Jonathon Kamel,(Payton, class of 2012)

More info on being a CPSfan volunteer blogger

Principal Pick

As a follow up to my blog post yesterday Admissions Overhaul, I've received some additional information regarding the admissions process. Under the new process there will be additional oversight to what is called a "Principal Pick". A principal pick allows principals from selective enrollment and magnet schools to admit a student who does not fit the normal admissions criteria that everyone else goes through. In order to get a student in through this principal pick a principal must sign an affidavit saying that the selection was not based on any "undue influence". Plus the CPS may add an independent group to make a final approval of the principal pick.

Obviously, the Principal Picks are where all the controversy lies. There will always be a subjective and fairness element to the decision making process, even if an independent board makes the final selection.

I see why they have Principal Picks. This allows a school to accept someone with exceptional ability. It could be athletic , artistic, or whatever. This allows the 6'6" exceptional basketball player to get into a school they normally would not have made it. But then again, the Principal Pick can also allow someone with Political connections get their undeserving daughter to get in. So, with the addition of Principal picks and even things like deciding who get's in based on socio-economic factors, you are still treading over very dangerous waters. Anything less than a 100% meritocracy model, will always have people crying : RAAACISM, FAVORITISM, or UNFAIRISM!

To be honest with you, I'm sick of all the ISM"S in the world. The best thing to do is create a fair system where the best get in and rise to the top. Get rid of any kind of preferential treatment based on factors that one can cannot control like  race, religion, gender, family income or anything else that an 8th grade kid cannot control. In the end we are all Americans and individuals and should be treated on an individual basis. Not as part of a disenfranchised group.

You'll see much more backlash by Chicagoans, just watch.

related

Sun Times - College Preps to be admitted by income

Admissions Overhaul

Admissions Overhaul

Nathan Beltran is a sophomore at Whitney Young. His brother Lucas Beltran is a sophomore at Lane Tech. Under the new admissions process, siblings would be more likely accepted in the same magnet school.

The CPS will announce this week the details of a new admissions overhaul for selective enrollment schools (i.e. Lane Tech, Whitney Young, Jones, Brooks, King College Prep, Northside, magnet elementary schools, etc.)

Now that race will no longer be a factor, here are some additional factors they will be considering:

• Siblings - Siblings would have greater preference of being admitted. So if you are a current 8th grader and you have a brother or sister going to Whitney Young, then you are more likely to be accepted.
• Neighborhood kids - If you live near the neighborhood of the selective enrollment school, you will be more likely to get in
• Socio-economic factors - it will be a complicated formula. But basically, the higher your family income, the more difficult it will be to get in. The poorer your family the more likely it will be to get in.

Lane Tech High School which once admitted all boys - will now get an additional admission acceptance overhaul.

The CPS was forced to eliminate most of it's race base enrollment for selective schools. I thought that by doing that the CPS would finally get closer to having a truly merit based admission system. One where someone gets admitted to a selective enrollment school based only on one thing - AM I THE BEST QUALFIED. I feel that the only factors to be considered are grades, attendance, test scores, and athletic ability. To me, if you consider anything else besides those 4 areas would create the risk of leaving out more qualified students.