Comments on: The Selective Enrollment numbers

By: Exasperated mom

Exasperated mom — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 02:54:47 +0000

I came across this site looking for CPS info and am intrigued. I’m surprised that there is no conversation about the scoring system itself and the grade scale component. The latest talk is that some of the magnet schools – Skinner, Franklin, LaSalle, Hawthorn – are now lowering grade scales so that more of their kids will get into the SE schools. The CPS recommendation is 93 for an A and 87 for a B. If you happen to go to a school that sticks to these numbers a child with a 92.3 will be penalized 25 points in the grade component of the SE scores (which, HELLO, is a lot). This is exactly what happened with us. A child scoring identically to my child attending one of these schools or others with lower cutoffs will have 25 more points. This inequity needs to be addressed now and could be a simple matter of assigning the grade its number value instead of ABC. I rallied at the “town meetings”, spoke to school and CPS officials and literally begged for change. The upshot, my son did score perfectly on ISATs and SE tests earning him his first choice SE school not by points but by living in a Tier 2 zone!! (the only blip in the NW side). We had one piece of luck due to a change in the system on our side. It seems that not only do you need to live in a trailer but you also need to consider your elementary school grading system if you have a choice. Quite frankly, I’m disappointed in the lack of support and interest that the parents have on this topic. The extreme demand for the Selective schools will far outlast the recession and with a budget deficient expected to continue growing – don’t expect to see many new school programs or the realization of that dream of the existing local school doing a turn-around. I too, like many of the parents on this site, was elated when my son was admitted to one of the top magnet schools. I reveled in the depth and rigor of the program. He attended outside academic programs, was tutored in 6th grade and took prep classes for the tests. This was all done with an eye toward getting him into the best possible school for his ability. I did not expect 7th grade to be the uphill battle that it had become. Even with our happy ending, I am exasperated and thoroughly disappointed with a system that put us through the ringer and teaches a child that a B is not good enough and a school that cares more about its ranking than about the success of any one child. If you would have told me that I would feel this way at the end of our 9 year journey with CPS, I would not have believed you.

By: Ted C..

Ted C.. — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:58:46 +0000

Jury-rigging the outcome is shameful. I hope someone sues CPS for using NCLB as a ruse for performing illegal race-based admission. CPS doesn’t seem to think it has to follow the law.

The answer isn’t to jury-rig the system. The answer is to provide better elementary schools so that more kids are at an equal level. Putting kids that are not academically at an equal level with their peers into the same school is a recipe for demoralization and failure for those students.

By: abc

abc — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:44:41 +0000

There were 50-something perfect 900s at Northside this year. This was stated by the administration.

By: SJ

SJ — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:34:24 +0000

Where can I buy a mobile home in the city????

By: Y

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:28:21 +0000

@James – The information was passed to me from a parent of a daughter going through the SE process, so I don’t have an official confirmation.

By: Disgusted

Disgusted — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:34:46 +0000

Every damn thing in this city is about race.

By: kg

kg — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:58:58 +0000

The most prestigious SE enrollment high schools in NYC (Styvesant, Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, etc.) have faught and resisted the pressure to change the most egalitarian admissions process devised since their inception: admission is based on the result of an admissions test given once a year. Period. There have been howls and scorn thrown on them from some politicians and civil rights leaders through the years, but they’ve stuck to their guns. They seem to argue that if you don’t like the result, don’t blame us –do something more so that more poor and non-Asian minority kids do well with the academics needed to do well on the admissions exam. I wish Chicago SE high schools in Chicago were similarly meritocratic, but can anybody in a million years imagine such a thing happening here?

By: James

James — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:14:58 +0000

To Y — I’m curious about the 27 perfect 900s that were supposedly accepted at Payton. Did you hear it from a good source? Payton is the SE schools that I worry about the most with the addition of the 25 NCLB transfer students. It’s much smaller than Northside and Whitney Young, yet it is accepting the same number of transfer students as those two schools: 25. Those 25 are a much larger percentage of the incoming class. If that percentage is offset somewhat by having a high percentage of perfect scores, maybe the impact will be lessened.

By the way, Payton admitted 146 kids through the regular admissions process this year. It gets 13 principal discretion spots, which is more than 5%, but the number is based on last year’s class size, which was larger than this year. Combined with the 25 transfer students, Payton’s incoming class will be around 184 kids. Assuming all 27 kids with perfect 900s go, they’ll make up about 15% of the class. The transfer kids and the principal discretion kids (who, by definition, didn’t make the cut through regular admission) will make up about 21% of the class.

By: cpscounselor

cpscounselor — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:54:46 +0000

Yes, many neighborhood schools will accept students from outside the attendance area. Such as Lakeview, Amundsen, Von Steuben, Taft, Lincoln Park etc because they all have programs that students can apply for and be accepted to w/o having to be in the attendance area. They may have an IB program, honors, ROTC, etc.

I think the SE process is horrible. I am at a school with a pretty high performing student population and many of the students who would have been accepted last year did not get in this year and they all happen to be minorities. The fact is, students who are in Tier 4 have to perform that much better because that Tier is more competitive. I don’t really think it’s fair when they are already competing for the small number of spots, and then they have to only really compete with the students in their Tier-way tougher for Tier 4 kids. And what if they are actually poor but live in a Tier 4 neighborhood or block?

Regardless, the SE process is a joke and pretty disgusting that barely any students have a real chance to go to a good high school. I recommend all parents save their money to either buy a house in the burbs or send their kids to private school for HS. The 8th graders who weren’t accepted are devastated. They start stressing about HS when they are 10 years old and it’s so unnecessary and way too much pressure. And god forbid they get a “B” in 7th grade -their chances are basically shot. I think its all pretty ridiculous.

By: LR

LR — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:13:29 +0000

My kids aren’t anywhere near high school yet (thank goodness), but if they were, it’s hard to just say I would send them to our local school. I believe the graduation rate at our local h.s. right now is 50%. It’s hard to envision putting them into an environment where half of their classmates aren’t graduating and feeling good about that decision.

I went to school in the northern suburbs and true, everyone sends their kids there. But there is a reason for that. There is major tracking within the school. If you are one of the brightest kids, you can take enough AP classes to have a year of college under your belt by the time you graduate. There are plentiful extracurricular opportunities. There are also options for kids who don’t really deal well with the traditional school environment, such as early release (for job purposes) and night school.

I don’t know what the answer is for Chicago. I think they are on to something with having more specialized high schools, like career and technical academies. I really don’t know…but you are in general dealing with a much different population, that is far less affluent than many suburban districts, so it’s hard to say that what works there will work here. What I do know is that worrying about tiers and making things more “fair” at the highest levels, doesn’t mean a whole lot when you look at the big picture for CPS.