CPS IG: Rich parents can still game selective-enrollment system

Though Chicago Public Schools has ramped up consequences for anyone cheating to get into its coveted selective-enrollment programs, its inspector general says the schools system still is susceptible to fraud by well-off families that scam to get their kids in.

A Highland Park family rented a small apartment in Rogers Park so their younger child could follow an older sibling to Northside College Prep, despite test scores that didn’t make the cut, all while living in the family’s suburban 3,500-square-foot home, according to findings made public on Wednesday by top schools watchdog Nicholas Schuler.

Eighteen students were caught trying to get into selective schools using sham addresses within Chicago to give them an advantage by disguising their wealthier addresses in neighborhoods like Edgebrook, Forest Glen and Beverly. One family even changed their address to one in a poorer neighborhood after their son received results from his admissions test.

The public school system affords more leeway in its admissions to poor children to give them a fair shot when competing against wealthier families for a spot in one of the district’s elite test-in high schools. But Schuler called CPS’ requirement to prove residency once, when the child applies, instead of looking at the family’s historic socio-economic situation is a “critical weakness of the tier-selection system.”

“The central focus should be on where the child has lived for the past several years,” he wrote in a 72-page report released Wednesday, adding that CPS had not yet announced any policy changes. “It is all too easy for a child to magically move ‘on paper’ from relative affluence to relative need in order to game the system.”

Of the thousands of students CPS enrolls in its test-in schools, which are rated among the best in the city and the state, Schuler said 62 have been caught since 2012 lying about their address.

“It is a small number of people, but we don’t know how big the problem is,” Schuler told the Chicago Sun-Times by telephone.

CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner said that asking families to produce more information would “put an extraordinary paperwork burden on families from some of the most challenged economic backgrounds and put up unnecessary barriers preventing them from enrolling their children in some of the city’s top schools.” She said CPS already flags suspicious cases, such as when the address on a selective-enrollment application is different than the one for 8th grade and the summer preceding freshman year “with particular attention to students who land in a lower tier as a result of the address change.”

The most recent list CPS gave the IG contained 77 potential cases, she said, adding that “CPS has acted swiftly on all the cases that the OIG’s office has presented back after investigation.”

The district has also adopted some IG recommendations, such as one last year to permanently ban any student caught cheating from all selective schools instead of just removing them and asking them to reimburse the city for tuition, she said.

Schuler said that no one removed since then has returned.

Several residency cases may cost parents their public-sector jobs, including CPS employees who set up sham addresses for their own children and were tagged with a Do Not Hire after getting caught.

A Berwyn family was found to have lied about a Chicago address just in time for their son to apply to selective high schools while sending their daughter to Andrew Jackson Elementary school in the West Loop. The Chicago apartment they purported to rent belonged to the dad’s brother-in-law, and it may also have been used to let the parents work for the City Colleges of Chicago, which has also been notified about their actual residence.

The report for the 12 months ending June 30 was released weeks ahead of its typical Jan. 1 publication date in a “general effort of trying to get information to the public and to the Legislature we have to report to on a more timely basis,” said Schuler, who has also added sporadic “significant activity” reports since taking the helm in 2015.

Addressing about one in six of 1,300 complaints, the IG also followed up on falsified student records, including dramatically inflated attendance at four high schools reported in October in the Chicago Sun-Times that led to multiple firings, and improper transfers at a fifth school that classified many dropouts as home-schoolers to inflate its graduation rates.

Noticeably absent were updates about two pending cases: The contract fraud case of former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who awaits sentencing on a federal fraud charge in April, and a separate probe into possible ethics violations by the board’s general counsel, Ronald Marmer, who, the Sun-Times has reported, has overseen work awarded to his former law firm that continues to pay him severance.

In an unusual public airing of grievances, Schuler told Board of Ed members last week that the Marmer case had stalled after CPS officials withheld documents and witnesses, citing attorney-client privilege.

FY 2016 Annual Report by Maureen T. Cotter on Scribd