But since Lindblom (SE high school and AC) was noted for their strong rise in the Sun Times’ new High School ranking AND because the principal is a reader and poster here, I figured they’re a good candidate to go first.

For the SE schools, I’m not going to get into the nuances of test scores.  It’s selective.  Is there coursework that will challenge your child? Yes.

Here is some info on the school (frequent readers will have seen this already.)

Lindblom Math & Science Academy

http://lindblomeagles.org/

6130 S. Wolcott Avenue

Grades 7-12
724 students
Track E school (they go more year-round rather than 3 months off in summer)
Shuttle service is provided from the nearby El lines.  AC has busing within the typical CPS boundaries.

High School Open House 11am-1pm Saturday Nov 5
Academic Center Open House 2-4pm Saturday Nov 5

In the 2011 Sun Times’ top 50 high schools ranking Lindblom shot up to #39 from #114.

Principal’s Message from the school web site:
Welcome to Lindblom Math & Science Academy, the most exciting learning community in Chicago!

Lindblom is a unique place. We like to call Lindblom a new school with a rich history. For years, Lindblom was a jewel on the south side of Chicago, turning out Chicago’s top graduates. It fell on hard times in the 90′s and went through a series of changes. In 2003, the Chicago Board of Education decided to close LIndblom and invest heavily in infrastructure. In 2005, I was given the opportunity to reopen Lindblom, hiring outstanding faculty and initiating new and exciting programs.

We boast some incredible programs and partnerships: We have the largest Arabic and Chinese language programs in Chicago. We offer the only biotechnology classes in CPS because of our powerful relationship with Baxter International. Our arts program has a four-year partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art that has our students working with Genius Award Winner Mark Bradford.

We have the most engaged and supportive alumni of any school I know. Our annual career day has had over 60 alumni returning to share their stories of high school and life after with our current Eagles. It is always a powerful day.

Lindblom is a great school for many reasons; these are just a few. I hope you will come by and see what Lindblom has to offer!

Go Eagles!

Alan Mather, Principal

Parent Review:

“I would definitely +1 Lindblom here (our daughter is in the AC program.) Great experience so far. Very strong academics coupled with an inclusive culture. (As a little, white Hyde Park-er, her fit socially was our first concern, but she has found real friendships with kids from a variety of backgrounds that I suspect she wouldn’t have found in many other schools.)

ps-Also a huge fan of Alan.”

Note from the principal, Alan Mather that he wrote on CPSObsessed:

Our support colloquia work this way: If a student has a grade lower than a C in any course, s/he is place in content area colloquia classes with the teachers they have. This gives the student extra time with the teacher in an area s/he may be struggling in.

For example, a student has a D in Arabic, a C in English, and a series of Bs. The students will definitely be placed in the Arabic colloquium with his/her teacher to get the extra help to be successful. Since each student is given three colloquium classes, s/he will also be placed in two other content area classes. Ideally, the placement would be in English and another course.

In the course where the student in more successful, s/he may be able to assist others, bringing other students up.

Register here:

http://www.selectiveprep.com/algebra-program-overview/register-for-alegbra-program?page=shop.browse&category_id=9

http://www.roscoeviewjournal.com/news/meet-lake-view-high-schools-new-principal

The RoscoeView Journal has an interesting interview with the new principal at Lake View High School.  (Thanks to another wonderful and well-read blog reader for sending me the link!)  It is fairly long-ish, but worth a read.  I’m pulling in some of the key points.

Overall, I think Dr. Werner, gives “good talk” for a principal.  I admit that I’m a sucker for that.  I don’t believe I’ve ever seen “proof” or research that a good-talking principal (or even a good principal for that matter) is directly correlated with Results.  Perhaps my corporate and marketing background influences me.  But I like a principal who sounds intelligent, well spoken, and strategic.  It’s what won me over years ago at Alcott (wrote a check for Tuition Based PreK that day – but ended up getting a TBPK going at our local school) and excited me at Bell (never got in) and at Coonley when the Options program was starting.

I’m excited that getting LVHS to be a neighborhood high school with a really good reputation is a real possibility.  And depressed that she (accurately) thinks it will take 5-6 years.  And excited that she wants (NEEDS!) parent involvement.  And depressed that it takes a hell of a lot to mobilize it.  And excited that she has faith in the staff.  And depressed that I don’t actually live in the neighborhood.  Oh, the ups and downs of CPS.

From the Roscoe View Journal:

Werner, who signed a four-year contract, understands there are no quick fixes or short cuts. While her ultimate goal may be to burnish Lake View’s reputation among residents who currently dismiss the school as a choice for their children, she realizes progress will come incrementally.

“Typically it takes three to five years to transform an elementary school,” Werner said. “It takes five to eight years to transform a high school. They’re enormous institutions and it will take a lot of groundwork to make [Lake View] a viable option.”

Part of the problem, which Werner experienced first hand in her previous position as principal of Marconi Elementary on the city’s West Side, is that few students enter high school with the skills needed to succeed. “Illinois has done a disservice with the ISAT test,” she said of the measurement used to gauge student achievement at the elementary level. “The ISAT has very base levels of passing. You could get a 35 percent on ISAT and ‘meet standards.’” According to Werner, it takes an “exceeds standards” score to indicate a student is remotely ready to handle the rigors of high school, any high school.

Though a movement is underway to link core curriculum in grades K-12 and align elementary testing with the ACT and PSAE standards, for the time being, students are entering Lake View and its peers ill prepared, often through no fault of their own, with a huge disconnect between their presumed abilities (ie, meets standards) and their actual performance.

To help bridge that gap, Werner hopes to engage many of the same neighborhood residents who turned Blaine Elementary, a Lake View feeder school, into a CPS gem. “I think traditionally parents are much more involved in elementary schools and let go, in terms of being involved at the school level, in high school,” she says. Werner would like to see some of that same grassroots enthusiasm channeled toward Lake View, with residents taking ownership of the high school in the same way they invest in the neighborhood by opting to shop at local businesses or eat at local restaurants. All Werner needs is a handful of parents willing to take a chance on Lake View with their “exceeds standards” students rather than sending them to Lane or Whitney Young or Northside College Prep. “Some parents are going to have to take the plunge, make a leap of faith,” Werner said. “There have to be some brave local parents.”

Her greatest selling point, Werner said, is her staff. “I believe in the fact that all students can learn, but the system measures apples to oranges. All students have a baseline, where you can take that student. We have enough talent in the building to remediate, enhance or accelerate an individual student’s learning experience,” she said. “Our teachers are so committed to our students. They’re dedicated and hard working and set high expectations for themselves.”

Developing partnerships between parents and educators will be a top priority for Werner. “Parents are the primary educators,” she says. “It can create a world of difference when that student knows the parent supports the teacher. The student will try harder or alter their behavior.”

So what would true reform of the U.S. education system look like? “You’d have to blow it up,” Werner said. Her dream curriculum would include a move toward symposia, block schedules, project-based assignments and interdisciplinary instruction. More realistically, Werner aims to be “a pebble in the river, to take a stand and fight for students and see if other pebbles follow. Together, we can create a dam to keep events and policies from rushing over us.”

The Lake View High School Principal Forum is scheduled for the evening of Monday, June 6 at Lake View High School.  The three candidates for principal will attend the ”meet and greet” from 6:00-7:00 and the forum will begin at 7:00.  Please share this information.  Hope to see you there.

I think this is really exciting. Nothing against the current admin, who I know absolutely nothing about, but since I suspect I am a bit of Reformer at heart, I like the idea of the school getting reinvigorated.  Or maybe it is the corporate drone in me who buys into the idea of “new management signals a change in strategy” as a way to build interest in the company (uh, or school.)

I’m trying to find out whether the current Asst Principal is on the short list, as well as who else might be.  I’ve heard there might be interest in getting some new blood in the place (from a current teacher) but it can be difficult for an LSC to NOT choose an existing staff member unless there is a real commitment to change.

I still haven’t gotten filled in on the last meeting (although I offered a friend a beer if he would write up some notes – the offer stands for any of you who attend a meeting!)  He did tell me that he feels the school may be at the tipping point.

The Trib also ran this article today.  That is some good PR for a neighborhood HS for a change.

‘Best kept secret on the North Side’

Lake View High seeks prestigious science, math program

(by Erin Calandriello, Special to the Tribune)

Mark Morgan, a junior at Lake View High School on Chicago’s North Side, does not come from a wealthy background. So his parents didn’t have the money to pay for private school.

Initially, Morgan, 17, didn’t think a neighborhood school would be challenging or rewarding. But after attending Lake View, he found otherwise. “After attending Lake View, I realized that neighborhood schools are just as good as private schools and magnet schools,” he said. Morgan cited extracurricular activities including band, mock trial, art club and sports teams along with the wide selection of Advanced Placement courses that Lake View offers students.

Now, administrators and teachers hope to enrich the 1,550-student school’s offerings by starting a STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — program. The advanced program, which is offered at other high schools in the Chicago area and across the nation, engages students in projects and independent research on a large scale, said Vyjayanti Joshi, who has been a biology teacher at Lake View for seven years and is the chairwoman of the science department.

Assistant Principal Carolyn Eggert and her colleagues said that if they could improve their science labs and add the STEM program to the curriculum, the school’s reputation would improve; mentors from the neighborhood would take students under their wings; companies would donate money and time to the school; the caliber of students would increase; and more neighborhood parents would view Lake View as a good choice for their children.

The school’s administration is asking Chicago Public Schools to match the $2 million raised with the help of a local alderman to pay for the STEM program and improve laboratories, Eggert said. “We need millions of dollars in capital improvement funds,” she said, noting that selective enrollment schools such as Walter Payton College Prep have received strong financial support for new facilities.

CPS has yet to release its budget to Lake View for the coming academic year.

Strengthening the offerings at Lake View High School would improve the quality of life in the neighborhood, Eggert said. “We are the best kept secret on the North Side of Chicago, but we are limited in what we can do,” she said.

Eight out of the nine science labs at Lake View are below CPS standards, Eggert said. The lab desks are nailed to the floor, and the school doesn’t have the money to provide necessary safety equipment like eye flushes and goggles.

Basic science supplies such as Bunsen burners, petri dishes, flasks and cylinders are in short supply, Eggert said.

Students said they are frustrated by the limited science options. They said they have had to skip labs because of a lack of equipment. The lack of resources also means they have had to share new pieces of equipment and computers, which means lessons that should take one day to finish are stretched over two days, the students said.

“There is such a limitation on what we can do,” Joshi said. “So many parents don’t want to send their kids to a magnet school, but we need to expand our rigor to keep them here. … We need the space and tools so we can better prepare them for postsecondary education.”

Eggert agreed. “We cannot advertise the STEM program if we don’t have a state-of-the-art science lab, where students can engage in expansive research. We cannot analyze data if we cannot collect it,” she said.

But despite these problems, students and teachers said they are proud of their school.  “There is no reason to pay too much money to get a good education because you can get a great education at a local neighborhood school,” said senior William Bazan, 18, who is from the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on the city’s Northwest Side and who has been enrolled in Lake View’s Math Science and Technology Academy throughout his high school career.

“Before I came here, I was just interested in mechanical work, and now I’m interested in mechanical and electrical engineering,” said Bazan, who plans to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “It opened up my mind to what I could do.”

The teachers work hard to help students, said Melissa Lara, 17, a junior who is interested in the arts.  “The teachers are great. They actually care — and that’s what matters the most,” Lara said.

The school opens its doors Saturdays to provide ACT tutoring, Eggert said. The average ACT score at Lake View is about a 20, which is “in line” with schools like Lane Tech College Prep High School, she said. About 41 percent of those who took an Advanced Placement test for college credit in 2010 passed it with a score of 3 or higher, Eggert said.

“It’s OK to go to your neighborhood school,” said Melissa Zagorski, a 15-year veteran physics teacher at Lake View. “I think magnet schools purposely put us down to build themselves up and make neighborhood schools seem like a last resort, but we’re not.”

Morgan agreed.  “When you’re in grade school, everyone says make sure you apply to magnet schools like Lane Tech because you don’t want to end up at schools like Lake View,” he said. “But the bad reputation they have — it’s not true. They might not have the best equipment or laptops for every student, but the kids care and the teachers want you to learn. If I could advertise, I would say, come here.”

Tuesday, May 17 at 7pm at Lake View High School: Hear from a panel including Alderman Tom Tunney and Alderman Scott Waguespack as they address ongoing plans to improve the academic and physical structure of Lake View High School. This meeting is open to the public. Parents with grade school-aged children are encouraged to attend.

So here is the lowdown on this group:

The group was formed by some parents whose kids are in a parochial school together, but like all of us, are looking ahead towards high school and wondering how we can expand some options. The parents who founded the group are in the Lake View high school district. As we know, there’s been some renewed emphasis on that school lately. The city has hired the ex Bell principal as a consultant to help LVHS flourish and find a way to attract a greater share of neighborhood kids (in particular, those who don’t get into a selective high school or might not prefer the rigor of one of those schools or might not want to travel across the city to get to school.)

So currently, there are parents in the Lake View district who are starting to connect with the school to see what some next steps are to increase community involvement (which as many of have learned is often correlated with a school’s success.)

The NSHSI group hopes to act as a central hub of parents from a range of neighborhoods who might also be working to improve their neighborhood high schools. Or possibly parents who might want to try to get another SE high school added to the north side (as a note, this is not their current objective) But the beauty of the idea is twofold:

Information-sharing
It makes total sense for parents of multiple schools to work together to share ideas and options and resources, etc rather than having each school reinvent the wheel. It feels a bit daunting a job to undertake but the more schools can learn from each other, the better.

Power in numbers
There are some efforts that may require a lot of parents lobbying CPS together, so a “central group” would be vital in organizing these efforts.

The group is currently waiting for the new mayor and CPS admin to be put in place to plan their next move. But I’m hoping that we can have some discussions here about some ideas, issues, suggestions, etc that might help the group to grow and figure out how to make an impact.

I think it’s important to point out that they’re not a group of parents who are here to “fix things” or do all the dirty work for us. I see them as more of a central hub for parents of schools around the north side (or other parts of the city) to connect.

I’ll have some more posts coming soon where we can discuss some possibilities for how/if neighborhood high schools can be made more appealing to a wider range of parents and what steps might need to happen to get the ball rolling.

In the meantime, I’d encourage you to Like their Facebook page. The more parents who are members will show the new mayor that a lot of parents are concerned about this issue.
NSHSI Facebook Page

More to come….

The first is some information from Selective Prep (a test prep service) about the shift in scores needed for SE entry and what it might mean for kids entering high school in the next few years.

The second is from a blog reader, Peter Bernstein, an economic consultant who teaches at DePaul and is the parent of a CPS student. I’ve attempted to imbed his nice tables but I know the 2nd once looks small. If you can squint, it’s pretty interesting.

Thanks to both for some thought-provoking data!

From SelectivePrep:
Admissions scores decline as more students are admitted by tier

This year average admissions scores at nearly all Selective Enrollment High Schools declined. Lane Tech, Young, Payton, and Northside College Prep saw declines of 12, 10, 8, and 6 points respectively. This decline comes after years of successive and often significant point increases.

This decrease in scores was precipitated by a change in CPS’ admissions policy. In November 2010, CPS changed the admissions formula from a 40%/60% Rank/Tier mix to a 30%/70% Rank/Tier mix. Students are admitted in the Rank category if they have the highest scores, regardless of their socio-economic Tier; while students in Tiers are admitted on the basis of their scores in comparison with other students in that Tier. This change effectively increased the percentage of students admitted in each Tier from 15% to 17.5%. While the scores of Tier 3 and Tier 4 students admitted to the most competitive schools increased or were flat, this was more than offset by an increased number of students from Tiers 1 and 2 with lower admissions scores.

Students in Tier 3 and Tier 4 needed to get perfect or nearly perfect admissions scores to get into the most competitive schools. At Northside, for example, the average score of an admitted Tier 4 student was 892 and for a Tier 3 student it was 889 on the 900 point admissions scale. The average score of an admitted student in Tier 4 at Payton was 892 and for a Tier 3 student it was 884. Effectively, Tier 3 and 4 students seeking admissions to these schools needed to get in the top 5% on both their 7th and 8th grade tests – and of course all A’s in 7th grade.

Additionally, the change in admissions policy made it possible for students with lesser academic records than in previous years to be admitted to Selective Enrollment High Schools. The lowest score of an admitted student declined across all schools, but this decline was particularly dramatic for the most competitive schools. Last year the lowest score of an admitted student at Lane Tech was 736, but this year it was 688 (-48 points). At Northside last year the lowest score was 850; this year it fell 58 points to 792. At Payton last year it was 855, and this year it was 806 (-49 points). At Whitney Young last year it was 818, while this year it was 784 (-34 points).

According to Matthew Greenberg, partner of educational services firm SelectivePrep, “Where a student lives is playing an increasing role in whether he or she is admitted to a top Selective Enrollment High School. This means that a student needs to focus intently on those factors he/she can control.” He added, “While straight A’s in 7th grade are mandatory for students targeting the more competitive schools, the margin for error in test scores has narrowed for students from higher Tiers. Students need to aim for superior scores on both the Seventh Grade Standardized Test and the Selective Enrollment Entrance Exam.”

From Peter:

With the release of the selective enrollment high school point totals for 2011, it is possible to compare each of the nine schools with their 2010 scores. I calculated the 2011 average score by taking the weighted average of the school’s average scores for Rank (30 percent of students), and each of the four tiers (70 percent of students in total). My calculation for 2011 is compared to the average scores from 2010, found at the CPS and various other web sites.

One difference this year is that only 30 percent of students were admitted based solely on having the highest scores (“Rank’) with 70 percent coming from the students having the highest scores in each of the four census tiers. That differs from the 2010 policy in which 40 percent of students were admitted by Rank and 60 percent by Tier. As a result of having fewer Rank admissions, overall average scores were a bit lower this year than last, with seven of the nine schools showing a decline. Lindblom (+11) and Jones (+6) were the only two schools to show an increase in their average point total from last year. By my calculations, Jones actually moved slightly ahead of Young, 859 to 858. Last year, Jones was 15 points behind Young. Northside and Payton continued to be the two highest-scoring schools.

The average of the test scores of the nine schools in 2011 was 805, six points lower than in 2010.

Cut-off Scores
Another area of interest is the minimum scores for admission for each school, also known as the cut-off scores. As most of you know, 40 percent of the admissions are based entirely on the student’s score (referred to as “Rank”) and the other 60 percent are drawn equally from the highest performing students in each of the four census tiers designated by the CPS.

In general, the cut-off scores were higher in 2011 than in 2010 for the Rank category with Lindblom and Jones showing the biggest increases. Cut-off scores for students from Tiers 4 and 3 were sometimes higher and sometimes lower, depending on the school. Cut-off scores were lower for students coming from Tiers 1 and 2, especially for students coming from Tier 1, where they were anywhere between 9 and 58 points lower in 2011 than in 2010.

As an aside, the cut-off is the minimum score for a student from a given Tier, not the average score. For example, the minimum score for a Tier 1 student admitted to Payton was 806, but the average score for all the Tier 1 students admitted to Payton was 849.

I don’t have data for average scores by tier in 2010, but it seems to me that the lower cut-off scores for Tier 1 and Tier 2 suggest that the selective schools had fewer applicants from these areas in 2011 than they did in 2010. If so, the CPS might think about how they can get more high-performing students from the Tier 1 areas to apply to the selective enrollment schools. The CPS might also consider reworking how they categorize different census blocks into the four tiers. With the release of the 2010 census data, it is likely that several areas will see their tier change next year.

I know there are readers who are going to be getting information soon about high school admissions.

Feel free to share your news/information here in the comments section.

Information is power, as they say… so let’s get empowered.  (Actually, maybe they don’t say that in the city of Chicago, but I still like to keep the dream alive.)

SCORE CUTOFFS FOR THE SE HIGH SCHOOLS ARE HERE:

http://cpsmagnet.org/ourpages/auto/2011/2/24/52593646/SEHS%202011-2012%20–%20First-Round%20Scores.pdf

From HSObsessed:

I’ve been thinking about racial diversity in the CPS high schools. Whether we admit it or not, I think it probably plays a role in the decision about which schools might be an option for our kids. But so many CPS high schools are not racially diverse, and by that I mean a decent mix of all the races. (I know, this raises issues about what exactly is a “decent mix”, what is “race” anyway, whether race is relevant today, the unfairness of multiracial kids being forced to choose as single race on school forms, whether socioeconomic status is more important in achieving diversity, how CPS’ racial makeup reflects a geographically segregated city population, etc, etc. All excellent topics and beyond the limited scope of what I’m going to bring up here, but feel free to discuss!)

 As of October 2010, this was the racial enrollment for all of CPS:

 Hispanic                               44%
African American             43%
White                                        9%
Asian                                        3%

When I look at the demographic data CPS supplies for its 140 or so high schools, the number of schools that are anywhere close to racially diverse looks to be about 19.

The high schools that are most diverse, in that they have at least 20 percent each Hispanic, African American and white are: 

Chicago Arts HS
Jones
Lincoln Park
Ogden International HS (their data seems to include the lower grades, however)
Payton
von Steuben
Whitney Young

If we loosen our standards to accepting as racially diverse a population of at least 15 percent each Hispanic, African American and white, we can add to the list two high schools (two special ed high schools, Vaughn Occupational and North Side Center, also meet this criteria):

Chicago Academy HS
Mather

If we are content with at least 10 percent each Hispanic, African American and white, then the following high schools are added:

Alcott Humanities HS
Amundsen
Chicago Ag
CICS – Northtown
Kennedy
Lake View
Lane Tech
Rickover Naval Academy
Senn
Steinmetz

But maybe it isn’t about sending your kid to a school with a mix of races. Maybe the important thing is the concern that your kid won’t be the token African American kid, or the only Hispanic kid, or only white kid in the crowd. So let’s say the only criteria is that you’d like at least 10 percent of your kids’ fellow students to be the same race as your kid, and you’re open to any variety for the mix of the other 90 percent. How many high schools meet the criteria for each race?

Hispanic                               86
African American             129
White                                       22
Asian                                       13

Of course, a huge number of CPS high schools are 90 percent or more composed of kids from a single race, and that’s not very diverse by most people’s standards. Also, geographic/commuting considerations and academic offerings/results factor in just a wee bit (ha ha), and so many of these numbers get reduced for a variety of reasons.

CPSObsessed Note:
Charter school composition as of the 08/09 school year:

Af Am 65%
Hispanic 31%
White 3%
Asian 1%