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Selective schools diversity
To increase diversity in top selective high schools, CPS is adding more seats for high-scoring students from the worst elementary schools, as well as money for academic support if students need it. Is this a good idea? How could the district revamp admissions to maintain diversity and top academics at elite high schools?
One idea that has been floated is to guarantee seats to the valedictorian and salutatorian at each elementary school. The argument for this approach is that it would reward hard work. Also, students in less rigorous elementary schools, who don't do particularly well on standardized tests or the admissions test, wouldn't be penalized. In addition, it would ensure that no racial or ethnic group would be under-represented in these top high schools.
However, it is difficult to see how the district would handle students at the gifted and classical schools who are held to high standards throughout their elementary school career. High school enrollment reports show that nearly every graduate Keller Gifted won a space at a selective enrollment high schools and I would expect as much. Maybe we could set up selective enrollment high schools for students in selective enrollment elementary schools, and also have some set aside for top students in elementary schools?
I am not sure that this is the way to go. But the socio-economic-based process put in place this year is convoluted and it didn't maintain diversity as evidenced by the last minute editions made by Huberman a few weeks ago.
It's important to remember that these so-called "selective enrollment" schools weren't created for the purpose of selective enrollment. Rather, they were created in order to promote racial desegregation, the result of a federal court order forced upon this, possibly the most segregated school district in the nation. Now that the district has had the Consent Decree thrown out and has, under Arne Duncan and Ron Huberman's leadership, abandoned all meaningful attempts at desegregation, these elite schools have become just that, part and parcel of an inequitable two-tier system of public education.
Recent Tribune articles also reveal how the selective-enrollment schools have become intertwined with Mayor Daley's still-alive-and-well patronage system through an intricate system of back-door enrollment for the children of party fundraisers, politicians, and VIPs. All this leading to the resignation of fall-guy, David Pickens.
A revamped admissions policy needs to insure that the magnets stay true to their original purpose and that a significant number of seats are reserved for African-American and Latino students, including those from the surrounding neighborhood.
More importantly, the magnets can't survive at the expense of the rest of a system, where neighborhood schools are seen as dumping grounds, with draconian program cuts and increased class size, as well as being punished as "failing schools" under NCLB and Race To The Top, for their students test scores.