Should a student’s education be limited by their home address? Should ALL parents have the right to choose where their child goes to school? Does public school choice lead to better educational outcomes for all students?
Last Thursday, the Chicago Board of Education not only asked these questions, but prematurely and irresponsibly answered them when they adopted a resolution calling for —in plain English — phasing out Chicago’s network of selective enrollment, magnet and charter schools, and the policy of allowing students to attend non-neighborhood schools.
The board’s action was wrong both in principle and in process.
In most of America, students attend their assigned neighborhood school and “choice” for parents is exercised by deciding where they can afford to live. If they don’t like their school, they send their kids to private school, they home-school or they move. This system has created extreme and pernicious segregation — the very “stratification and inequity” the Board of Education says it wants to address.
Today, roughly half of Chicago’s elementary students and three-quarters of high school students attend a school outside their attendance boundary, whether it is a specialty school or just a different neighborhood school. By the numbers, a majority of Chicago’s families —most of them Black and Brown — clearly value choice, as do most decision-makers in this city.
Likewise, I sent my own kids to our neighborhood elementary school and to a private high school. That was a choice my husband and I made based on what we felt was in the best interests of our children. Every parent deserves that right.
This untimely debate unfolds as our school system faces multiple challenges around performance, enrollment and finances. Student performance has not recovered from the pandemic shutdown.
Enrollment is down by about 100,000 students since 2000, primarily due to lower birth rates, the mass exodus of Black families on the South and West sides, and declining immigration. And the district is projecting a $670 million deficit next year as federal COVID funds run out.
To meet these challenges, the school system should do everything possible to improve student outcomes, keep families in the system and attract them back.
Listen to parents, students about choice
School choice is not perfect, but it has helped Chicago preserve a degree of economic and racial diversity in its public schools system. Absent choice, our schools will be even less diverse.
Opponents of school choice will say selective enrollment, magnet and charter schools leave neighborhood schools underinvested. Nonsense. Strong neighborhood schools and choice schools can and do coexist. Nothing is stopping policymakers from investing more in them — I did it as CEO of CPS, and I support continued investments. Continuing to pit one against the other is misleading and divisive.
This being Chicago, this is about politics. Key players in the debate have long been opposed to school choice on ideological grounds. And while I respect the rights of unions, board members or other leaders to pursue a political agenda, I cannot be silent when that agenda disadvantages Black and Brown kids by denying their parents the same choices policymakers have made for their own children.
Shamefully, the only group of people policymakers routinely believe don’t deserve their rights are poor kids of color. This is one of the most inequitable, anti-Black policy actions anyone can take. It must stop.
Facts drive good policy, not ideology and politics. Before declaring such a controversial policy, the board should conduct a racial impact analysis on reducing school choice.
Project the impact on district enrollment and finances. Show how their plan will help or hurt student outcomes. Taxpayers also deserve to know where new revenues for promised neighborhood school investments will come from. Our communities are fed up with empty promises.
Equally important, the board should talk to principals, teachers and local school council members in choice schools. Above all, listen to parents and students and see if they really want to give up their right to choose the school that best meets their needs.
Lastly, why is this being done before the newly elected school board is in place? Why is an unelected board rushing through a decision that could profoundly impact present and future families in the district? Who is managing community engagement, and who is accountable for the transparency, honesty and accessibility of that process to parents?
Serving on the Board of Education is a privilege. It’s not a platform to drive agendas. There is no justification for taking away the rights of parents and putting the interests of their children at risk.
Janice Jackson is a graduate of Chicago Public Schools and served the district for more than 20 years, including as CEO. She is now CEO of Hope Chicago.
