CPS selective enrollment schools to
accept fewer affluent students under proposed change
In one of his first major moves as CEO, Pedro Martinez is proposing
the school district drop part of the current system that awards 30% of the
seats at these schools strictly based on a student’s seventh grade marks and
test scores.
By Sarah Karp
March 10, 2022 05:52 PM
Chicago Public Schools is poised to make a significant change to
the admissions process for its coveted test-in elementary and high schools in
an attempt to award more seats to low-income students.
In one of his first major moves as CEO, Pedro Martinez is
proposing that the school district drop part of the current system that awards
30% of the seats at these schools — including for the nearly 16,000 students at
11 selective enrollment high schools — strictly based on a student’s seventh
grade marks and test scores. This would almost certainly open up more seats to
a more diverse student population and make it more difficult for students from
the city’s upper-income neighborhoods to get in.
It is a move some have long advocated for, especially as the
student population in some of the most coveted schools, including some of the
top schools in the state, have become more affluent, white and Asian.
Most of the seats at these selective schools — 70% — are divided
among four groups of students based on the socioeconomic characteristics of
where they live. Students earn a score out of 900 based on their grades and
test scores and then compete for seats against students in their same
socioeconomic group.
Another 30% of the seats are awarded exclusively to students who
earn the most points in the admissions system — and those seats mostly go to
higher-income students. In the 28 selective enrollment elementary schools, 85%
go to students in upper-income areas, and in high schools, it’s 73%, according
to CPS.
Officials say they want to make the process more equitable. They
are proposing either getting rid of the rank order set aside or reserving more
spots for students for lower-income communities.
This would be the most significant change to the admission process
since 2009, when CPS was forced by the courts to drop race as one factor in
admission. Instead, it began weighing a student’s socioeconomic status, in
large part as a proxy for race.
This new change would make the admissions process more fair,
rather than having it tip in favor of students from middle- to upper
middle-class communities, said Lauren Sartain, a professor at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an an affiliated researcher at the University
of Chicago Consortium on School Research.
“It means that a student living in a low-income neighborhood who
has a high academic record, high test scores and high grades is equally as
likely to get into a selective enrollment high school as a student who is from
a higher-income neighborhood also with high test scores,” she said.
CEO Pedro Martinez says this is important to him.
“I believe academic ability is distributed equally across our
city and that access to our selective enrollment schools should be more
equitable,” said Martinez, explaining the proposed change in a video.
The change wouldn’t take effect until the application process
next year for students applying for fall 2023. The school district is surveying parents about the change and is
holding an information session Thursday evening.
CPS officials have long maintained a desire to ensure the
selective enrollment schools, which were created as a result of a 1980 federal
desegregation consent decree that was lifted in 2009, are diverse.
Nate Pietrini, who runs High Jump, a program to help low-income
students get into top high schools, said doing away with the rank order is a
change many people have long wanted.
“It’s something that I and a number of folks have been
advocating for years,” he said. An analysis by a group that Pietrini works with
indicated that about 500 more low-income students could earn a seat in a
selective enrollment high school without the rank order, he said.
Still, the bigger problem is that not all schools offer
high-quality programs, he said.
Pietrini spent five years as principal of Hawthorne Elementary
School in Lake View on the North Side, an area with many affluent families. He
said it might be difficult for some parents to understand this policy change
since it can be challenging for students from upper-income areas to get into
top schools now.
Last year, students in the highest income areas had to get
nearly a perfect score to get into Payton College Prep and Northside College
Prep and a high score to get into Lane Tech, the three closest selective
enrollment high schools.
“People generally are for increasing access and increasing
equity, until it becomes about their own situation or what you perceive to be
best for your own kid, and so I would have to do a delicate dance,” Pietrini
said.
Arjuna Ariathurai, chair of the Hawthorne Local School
Council, said he expects the complaints will come after the change when
students with perfect scores end up getting rejected from their top choices.
Ariathurai said there’s already an assumption that a higher income student with
a B average or one who scores in the 85th percentile on standardized test
scores must look at other options.
But Ariathurai wonders if this change will really solve the
problem of limited enrollment of low-income students at some of the most
coveted selective high schools, some of which are far from their homes.
He also wonders how students who are not as qualified might fare
in the highly competitive selective high schools.
Some research shows that selective enrollment schools are not
always the best choice for students, Sartain said. High-performing students
tend to do well regardless of where they go, she noted. And there’s some
evidence that high-performing students from low-income backgrounds from
neighborhood high schools get into more selective colleges than those that go
to selective enrollment high schools.
“Families should think about all the options that they have
available to them and think about their children, and what would be the best
fit both academically and also socially,” she said.
Ursula Taylor, who is on the Local School Council at Lincoln
Elementary School in Lincoln Park, said she hopes this policy change gets
people in her affluent community talking about how they can exit the “rat race”
that accompanies trying to get into a selective enrollment high school. She
said the parents in the neighborhood should be able to support a local school
where they can feel comfortable having their children attending.
Lincoln Park High School, which has both neighborhood and
selective programs, has become more of an option for local families, she said.
But there’s still a heavy emphasis on the elite selective enrollment high
schools.
“The seventh graders are carrying a burden on their shoulders,”
Taylor said. “They’re stressing about every grade, the test scores. It’s like they’re
in high school applying for colleges, but almost worse.
“I don’t think we need to do that in Lincoln Park,” Taylor said.
“We shouldn’t need to do that anywhere. But there’s really no excuse for it
here. Why are we in this fear-based mentality? Why do we have a scarcity
mentality about our children’s education in Lincoln Park?”
Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on
