Barely six weeks away, the coming school year is supposed to usher in a new era of choice for students and promise for a more competitive future in public education.
President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act kicks in this fall, allowing students in chronically failing schools to transfer to better ones.
It’s a great concept: choice. In Chicago, alas, the reality is more complicated.
Chicago has 179 elementary schools that failed the Illinois Standards Achievement Test for four years in a row. That means some 124,000 students in those schools, under the new law, have the option of transferring to better-performing schools. If space exists.
That’s a mighty big if. Chicago school officials figure only 2,000 to 3,000 open spaces exist in better performing schools. Top schools already are overcrowded, and it makes no sense to ship a child from one failing school to yet another.
No one, Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan included, has a clue how many parents will opt to change schools in the coming weeks. Already, though, 42,000 children in the city’s system are exercising choice by attending non-neighborhood schools.
Against this backdrop, it’s confounding why so many influential voices remain obstinately opposed to creating more and better options for kids. That’s what’s holding back the effort to expand the number of charter schools in Chicago.
Teachers unions don’t like them, although it’s unclear just why beyond the fact that charter teachers are not dues-paying union members. (Legally, though, charter teachers may organize their own separate union.)
Union opposition, in turn, makes some legislators, particularly those who suckle at the breast of Mother Union, nervous about charter schools.
Here, apparently, is what’s giving the opponents the heebie-jeebies. Twelve of Chicago’s 14 charter schools are performing better than regular neighborhood schools on a variety of measures, from attendance and graduation to math and reading. They are public schools, so they don’t charge tuition and are open to any student regardless of achievement or special needs. They are located in some of the city’s most challenging neighborhoods.
And as of March, more than 4,200 students were on waiting lists to get into those schools. As of today, there are at least a half dozen established and innovative groups angling to start their own charter schools, from the Field Museum to DePaul University to National-Louis University.
But they can’t, because legislators won’t approve a measure to expand the number of charter schools in Chicago from 15 to 30. In negotiations over the bill this spring, charter officials even agreed to a union demand that 75 percent of all charter teachers be certified (currently only 52 percent are), but still the bill got nowhere.
Along the campaign trail this fall, listen carefully to candidates’ rhetoric about the importance of better schools and better choices for kids. Then ask whether they’re going to support the measure when the charter school expansion bill comes up again during the fall veto session.
That ought to separate the real reformers from preservationists of the status quo.
