I’m in the Seoul Incheon airport (which is awesome, I might add) killing time between flights, so I don’t have much time.
Nevertheless, I wanted to direct some attention to this report from the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago about how Chicago schools, shockingly, have not dramatically improved despite promises to the contrary.
The long and short of it is that the only reason test scores appeared to have gotten better is because the standard for “passing” was lowered for the state of Illinois (as it has in almost all states, because of the “improvement” standards of No Child Left Behind). Yeah, that’s been done. Test scores have improved (0.9 points in ACT over 6 years), but honestly, considering the time and money that has gone into each school’s ACT prep programs, that’s depressing.
Adding to the difficulty of raising scores is the exodus of good students to private and suburban schools; parents who care get their kids out while they can.
I would say, however, that the illusion of mayoral control is misleading. It doesn’t matter who controls the school system — the mayor directly or a school board (although school boards do generally suck). Urban schooling is a systemic problem that needs to be solved systemically — sensible standards across schools, better principal evaluation, an elimination of the “transfer wherever you want” system, etc.
Note, too, that this study focuses on high school — my area of practice. American elementary education is actually not that bad, considering the vast differences in pre-K education that students receive.
I can assure you that it is exceedingly difficult to motivate students and increase test scores (2.5 ACT reading points in a year!) when foundational aspects of education are missing (how to take notes, how to read anything longer than 1 page, etc.), most of which happens in middle school — the black hole of American education. This will be the subject of my third and final teaching blog post some time in the future, but I did want to point out this report before I catch my plane.
