What You Need to Know About the Failing Chicago Public Schools

In major cities across America, public school students are entering their adult years far behind the curve. But nowhere is the crumbling of a major public school system more evident than in the city of Chicago.

Recently, one school's prom slogan showed in just four words how far Chicago Public Schools has fallen. That Spring, just like high schoolers at schools across America, students at Paul Robeson High School planned their prom festivities. They picked dresses, tuxes, corsages and boutonnieres. 

Signs of a Bad Public School System
But before all of that, they picked a theme: "This Is Are Story." It's an error, and an obvious one -- but it's no laughing matter. It's just the latest sign of how badly Chicago's public schools are failing the city's students. 

Consider this:

• Four out of 10 CPS freshmen don't graduate.
• 91 percent of CPS graduates must take remedial courses in college because they do not know how to do basic math and other schoolwork.
• Only 26 percent of CPS high school students are college-ready, according to results from ACT subject-matter tests.

Youngsters not Prepared for Graduation

In reference to the youngsters that do graduate, the requirements are not rigorous at all. In fact, students can fail one of four core classes (English, mathematics, science, and social sciences) each year and still advance to the next grade level. They also only have to garner just a D in each class they take to earn the 24 credit hours they need to graduate.

It is important to remember what a graduation rate doesn’t tell us -- namely, how prepared the graduating students are for college. On that front the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union is failing miserably.

According to a recent report, 45 percent of CPS graduates begin their senior year not doing well enough academically to attend a four year college. In the fall after graduation, the most common outcome for these students was to be neither working nor in school. Education should be the great equalizer; but in Chicago, public education is more of a holding cell than a launch pad.

Black Youngsters Used as Pawns
The prom slogan mentioned above is especially sad when you consider which school it comes from: Paul Robeson High School is located in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago -- one of the poorest, most violent neighborhoods in the city. There have been 156 murders in Englewood since 2007. The average per capita income is $12,255, and 23.6 percent of residents are unemployed.

And as things stand, Paul Robeson students have little reason to hope for change. They are some of the same students who, as underclassmen in September 2012, were used as pawns by the Chicago Teachers Union during a week long strike.

During this teacher contract battle, the CTU and it's members walked out on about 400,000 students at 675 schools. For that week, students and their families were left scrambling -- for daycare, for meals, for a safe place to spend the days or trying to get off work so students weren't unattended. Not to mention, they weren't learning.

This fight wasn't waged over students; it was a power struggle about how much grown-ups get paid. Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis and other union leaders waged a war that locked students out of classrooms over pay increases and refusal to implement a more rigorous teacher evaluation processes.

I will talk about this recent CTU strike in my next post.

What do you think about this situation. Leave your thoughts below. 

My Journey from High School Dropout to Becoming a Professional

My high school drop out mistake began at age fifteen. Although legally I could have been forced to continue attending school until age of 16, the big city school that I attended either didn't have a truant
officer or if it did, no one was sent to my house to investigate why a youngster of fifteen all of a sudden wasn't going to school.

The reality was this school just didn't care. In fact, in my opinion neither the administration nor the teachers really cared about the students. And, therein lies the primary reason why most youngsters drop out of big city high schools. They perceive, and accurately so, that no one cares about them. To put it another way^, no one is likely to take the time to understand what they are experiencing in their lives that might be driving them towards dropping out of high school. They just drop out and become another statistic.

However after dropping out and wasting nearly three and a half years of my life, having no sense of direction and getting into trouble in the streets, I enlisted into the Army. My goals for going into the Army were to finish high school and to learn a marketable trade. I did not realize either of these two goals, although I did complete cook school and became an army cook. Nevertheless, the two benefits that were really helpful for me were the GI bill providing Educational Benefits and the Veterans' Home Loan benefit. After being honorably discharged, I took advantage of both. One allowed me to enter and complete undergraduate school and the other allowed me to gain ownership of my first home.

Although it took me six years from the time I dropped out after my second year in high school to graduate from high school, the learning experience was invaluable. I then had acquired the inner motivation and discipline to complete undergraduate school, to complete graduate school, and to go on to become licensed in three different professions.

The lesson here is that if just one teacher or administrator would take maybe five to ten minutes after classes are over to engage a youngster in a conversation about how things are going at home; how things are going with his class mates; and, how things are going in his neighborhood. Then after this conversation, to invite the parent to come in for a conversation about how they can work together in behalf of the student.

Just this small act would significantly reduce the number of yearly drop outs.


Do you know any youngsters who had a similar experience as I did? Leave your comments below.