With a new school year underway in Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration and the current Board of Education have begun the conversation about how to fix the inequities between neighborhood and selective enrollment schools.
The exact actions remain unclear. But I saw those inequities firsthand when I left teaching in CPS neighborhood high schools and began teaching at a selective high school.
And the inequities I saw weren’t merely in resources and staffing, which is what I hear in most media soundbites as the difference-makers for student success.
In 2003, my first school, Corliss — a neighborhood high school on the Far South Side — had one computer lab for 1,400 students. We shared a nurse and a social worker with other schools. Many of our students’ textbooks were tattered, unless we got grant money to buy new ones. Teachers bought many of our own supplies, since GoFundMe didn’t yet exist.
Nearly a decade later, in 2012, I began teaching at Lindblom, a top-performing selective enrollment school in Englewood. Resources were still lacking. Students still had tattered textbooks, and the school shared a social worker and a nurse with other schools, just like at Corliss.
Many suburban schools were then aiming for a 1-to-1 laptop-to-student ratio. We had three or four carts of laptops, about 100 altogether, for a student body of 1,400, along with a few half-functional computer labs. Many teachers used GoFundMe for classroom supplies and still do.
So when I think of the differences between neighborhood and selective schools, I don’t think about resources. I think about the fact that students in selective schools had been successful for a long time, fully separated from students who hadn’t.
One group had been in schools where the expectations and experiences were designed from the beginning to foster pride and achievement — while the other group had been in schools they knew, from the beginning, were considered second-tier.
Set up for success, starting in kindergarten
At the age of 4, children in Chicago can take a test for placement in a school for students deemed gifted and talented. Students from these schools are three times more likely to gain admittance, via another test, into a selective enrollment high school.
So at Lindblom, I saw students whose educational experiences were super-positive from a very young age. It gave them a sense of self-efficacy and school pride missing in neighborhood schools. Getting into Lindblom gave them the feeling they were the “haves” in a have/have not system.
Meanwhile, at Corliss and TEAM Englewood (another neighborhood school where I taught), students often said, “I couldn’t get into (name a selective enrollment school). So that’s why I’m here.” We teachers often had to work to change that mindset, to get students to see their neighborhood school should be a first choice, not a backup.
A first step toward equity could be to analyze enrollment practices that put students into gifted centers at age 5. Suburban districts are an example: Neither the district where my own children are enrolled, nor the districts that feed into the high school district where I now teach, have gifted centers.
Instead, many schools offer advanced reading and math courses starting in third grade, while students’ other classes are together. Children have several chances to enter advanced classes over the years. They aren’t separated at kindergarten.
However, dismantling this process and the gifted elementary schools isn’t likely to happen, as these schools often have stable enrollment, stable faculty and involved parents. Taking away resources and staffing from gifted and selective schools isn’t an option either, since they still often pale in comparison to suburban public schools.
A second step would be to offer more support at neighborhood elementary schools. To achieve equity, students in neighborhood elementary schools need to be in smaller classes with more faculty and high-quality resources geared to help them improve academically. They need extra learning time, year-round tutoring and summer break enrichment.
The district also needs neighborhood high schools that provide a rich, inspiring experience, with both collegiate and vocational options, to compete with elite selective enrollment schools.
It is no easy task to solve this dilemma. But Johnson and the board must take steps forward. No CPS student should feel like they’re going to their backup school, at the age of 15 or 5.
Gina Caneva is the library media specialist for East Leyden High School in Franklin Park and holds a PhD from University of Illinois Chicago in education. She taught in CPS for 15 years and has National Board Certification.
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