There’s a lot to unpack in a just-released Public Agenda poll on Chicago Public Schools, but the most troubling finding — the takeaway that should be uppermost in the minds of adults — is that most Chicagoans give CPS low marks on its most vital assignment: Teaching kids.
Asked to select their top three from among a list of problems affecting the district, most respondents, including parents, put “students not learning enough academically” at the top of the list. When asked to grade the district, 54% gave CPS a “C.” The next most common grade was “D.” Parents were only slightly more likely than Chicagoans overall to give the district a “B.”
Chalk some of this up to the lingering bad reputation CPS has struggled with for decades, despite progress the district has made in recent years, as WBEZ’s Sarah Karp reports in her story on the poll. Graduation rates have increased, achievement is accelerating at a faster clip here than in other big cities, and CPS deserves kudos for emphasizing intensive “high dosage” tutoring to help students recover from pandemic learning loss.
But there’s no denying CPS isn’t where it should be. Parents and the public rely on test scores as one indicator of achievement, and those scores remain far below average. Only a quarter of students met or exceeded state reading standards in 2023, and less than 20% met or exceeded state math standards.
No wonder so many Chicagoans, parents and nonparents, are concerned. Those that aren’t should be.
Right about now we’re hearing the voices of those who insist that “test scores don’t mean anything,” that they don’t measure intangibles like creativity, that there is racial and class bias in standardized tests, and that poverty and inequality — especially in Chicago, where Black students have been shortchanged for decades — greatly affect learning.
But test scores shouldn’t be ignored either, especially when they remain persistently low, year after year.
Educators know that research strongly suggests high-quality teaching is the most important in-school factor driving achievement. Parents and other stakeholders should know that, too. Pushing for more teacher training, something 82% of poll respondents support, should be a priority. So should tougher measures, such as replacing teachers who aren’t performing (rigorous teacher evaluation ought to be part of any new CPS teacher contract) and holding schools accountable for implementing improvement plans. Large majorities of respondents rightly favor those steps, too.
Read the full report with detailed findings on school quality, the budget, under-enrolled schools, choice, and politics and the school board, at publicagenda.org. The poll was a collaborative project among Public Agenda, the Sun-Times and WBEZ, with funding provided by The Joyce Foundation.
Lawmakers, listen to the public and pass HB 303
As CTU and its supporters prepare to descend on Springfield Wednesday for a day of action to lobby for more funding, they face this cold reality: Gov. J.B. Pritzker has already told state agencies to prepare for cuts next fiscal year, which means lawmakers have no extra money to give. Plus, it’s worth noting that CPS has since fiscal year 2019 received a 30% increase — $1,542 per student — in funding from the state.
That doesn’t mean CPS is “fully funded.” But other low-income school districts across Illinois could use more money, too — and they’re not likely to get it either.
Here’s another poll finding on that note: Parents are evenly split (49% to 49%) between those who say CPS needs more funding and those who say CPS needs to spend the money it already has more effectively. Overall, 42% of Chicagoans say they are “not too confident” that CPS spends its budget effectively; another 31% say they are “not confident at all.” Only 19% say they are “very confident” about effective spending.
Lawmakers can also expect more lobbying against HB303, the bill to stop closures, disproportionate budget cuts and changes to admissions standards at selective and magnet schools until 2027, when a fully elected School Board — that is, a board not stacked with mayoral-appointed folks aligned with CTU — is in place.
Legislators should stand firm and pass the bill. A “yes” vote will help preserve some of the city’s top schools, including magnet and selective schools in Black communities that lobbied strongly to get them, and keep families invested in the system as a whole. A “yes” vote, as we wrote last month, is about letting Chicagoans’ representatives make the final decision on this controversial question. That’s the “democracy” those who lobbied so strongly for an elected school board clamored for.
And as other poll results show, most Chicagoans, especially parents, ultimately favor school choice.
Overall, city residents want more support for neighborhood schools, and the district should continue on that path. But half of Chicagoans agree with the statement “students should be able to attend any school they choose, even if it means some neighborhood schools lose students and funding.”
People of color were more likely to favor choice: 61% of Asians, 57% of Blacks and 54% of Latinos agreed with that statement.
CPS has work to do to get better grades. Pitting neighborhood and selective schools against each other won’t help.
Lawmakers should do what they can to prevent that.
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