Testing, Graduation, and the Numbers Behind Charter Schools in Chicago
Posted October 3, 2012, at 4:36 p.m.
The Chicago teachers strike was settled relatively quickly, but it's almost certain that it was merely a preview of issues to come: school closings, pensions, and the expansion of charter schools, for example. Ben Joravsky has been writing about the last of these for awhile, and he takes another shot across the bow this week on what's certain to be a point of contention in the coming years.
There are 541 elementary schools in Chicago. Based on the composite ISAT scores for 2011—the last full set available—none of the top ten are charters. None of the top 20, 30, or 40 either.
In fact, you've got to go to 41 to find a charter. Take a bow, CICS Irving Park!
Most of the 49 charters on the list are clustered near the great middle, alongside most of their unionized neighborhood schools.
It's not that Joravsky is instinctively anti-charter; in a 2011 piece about how charters have the ability to kick out, flunk out, or lose students by attrition—failing students have to pay $140 for makeup courses