4 things to know about Chicago Public Schools’ new strategic plan
The Chicago Board of Education’s five-year plan includes redefining student success and ending school ranking based on performance. It also includes expanding sustainable community schools, which record among the lowest student outcomes.
The Chicago Public Schools Board of Education released a plan Sept. 18 outlining its strategic objectives for the next five years. The plan is full of optimistic language and calls for equitable investment in educational opportunities for all Chicago families.
But there are differing views on what the plan really means for Chicago families.
Within the district’s renewed philosophy is a plan to redefine student success and end the practice of ranking schools. This means a move away from accountability metrics for students and schools based on academic performance.
The plan also reveals a break with Chicago Teachers Union rhetoric to move away from selective enrollment schools. The district’s plan also includes a call to expand CTU’s favored but failing school model, sustainable community schools.
Here’s a look at four components of the district’s strategic five-year plan and what they really mean for Chicago families.
1) Continues support for parental choice in public schools
Amidst community support for selective enrollment schools, the district has changed its plans to move away from selective enrollment schools that provide a lifeline to the city’s minority students.
While the district’s plan revealed its priority is to invest in neighborhood schools, it included a commitment to “continue to invest in successful schools across all models, including neighborhood, selective enrollment, magnet, charter and alternative school options.”
CTU has long been an opponent of parental choice in schools and the district’s commitment to invest in alternative schools is a different tone after previously passing a resolution in December 2023 intending to move away from selective enrollment and charter schools in CPS.
Selective enrollment schools are a desired schooling option among Chicago parents seeking a higher-quality education in CPS, especially for minority families. Black and Hispanic students are around six times more likely to be proficient in reading at selective enrollment high schools compared to other traditional public high schools in Chicago.
Over 54,000 students attend charter schools in CPS and nearly 98% are Black or Hispanic compared to 82% of students in CPS-run public schools. These schools also offer hope to Chicago’s families, especially the minority families these schools primarily serve.
A study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found charter school students outperformed their peers at traditional public schools in year-over-year learning gains. Students in poverty, and especially minority students in poverty, experienced even greater academic gains at charter schools.
Illinois Network of Charter Schools and its president, Andrew Broy, applauded CPS’ plan to continue its investment in charter schools.
“Charter schools have been a flourishing part of the CPS environment for nearly three decades, and we look forward to working with the board for many more years to support Chicago’s most vulnerable learners.” Broy said.
2) Expands the number of sustainable community schools
While CPS separated itself from CTU leadership’s rhetoric opposing successful selective enrollment schools, the district’s plan joins CTU in advocating for the expansion of sustainable community schools within CPS. This is CTU’s favored model of schooling, and CTU is demanding a tenfold increase in the number of these schools – from 20 schools to 200 – in its proposed contract provisions.
But this education model is failing Chicago students. Currently, there are 20 sustainable community schools in CPS – 12 elementary schools and 8 high schools. In all but one of CPS’ current sustainable community elementary schools, 1-in-5 or fewer students can read at grade level and 1-in-10 or fewer can do math proficiently.
Similarly, in Chicago’s 12 sustainable community high schools, 1-in-10 or fewer students can read or perform math at grade level. In two of the high schools, no tested students were proficient in reading or math.
Despite the poor outcomes at CPS’ sustainable community schools, CPS and CTU want to expand these schools to “support schools as community hubs.”
In their words, sustainable community schools are “designed to provide wraparound academic, health, and social support for the entire community beyond the traditional school day.” Yet, many of the supposed benefits of sustainable community schools are not being realized at CPS’ models. They produce poorer academic achievement and higher chronic absenteeism.
The cost to operate these poor-performing sustainable community schools is substantially higher than operating CPS’ successful selective enrollment schools. The average per-student spending across CPS’ 20 sustainable community schools in the 2022-2023 school year was $22,604, while the average across CPS’ 29 selective enrollment schools was $17,922.
CPS is already expecting a budget shortfall of $500 million next year when federal pandemic relief runs out, and that is before factoring in what the CTU gets out of over $10 billion in new contract demands. This is not a time to throw more money at a program that is failing students in a district that is already letting them down.
3) Redefines student success
The most recent test data available from the Illinois State Board of Education reveals 74% of third- through eighth-grade students in CPS did not meet grade level standards in reading and 82% did not meet grade-level standards in math.
For students in 11th grade who took the required SAT in spring 2023, 78% were not proficient in reading and 81% were not proficient in math.
With these poor proficiency rates, which suggest CPS is not fulfilling its duty to educate students or prepare them for success beyond graduation, the district has proposed new metrics to define student success which remove emphasis from standardized testing.
The district’s plan includes a call to redefine student success. In the special board meeting before the vote on the strategic plan, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez noted CPS will no longer look at a “narrow set of outcome data.” Instead, as noted in the district’s strategic plan, CPS will define students by “robust and holistic learning and well-being measures” as defined in CPS’ Graduate Profile.
The competencies in the graduate profile look at whether students are ethical and collaborative leaders, inquisitive learners, empowered decision-makers, engaged community members and adaptable and independent thinkers.
“Measuring not just academic progress because that is still important, but student well-being and connection to the extent that they’re an empowered decision maker. Whether or not they’re prepared and making sure they’re prepared for post-secondary success,” said Martinez.
CTU has long been an opponent of standardized testing. In August 2024, CTU president Stacy Davis Gates went on Chicago radio station WVON to decry standardized testing as a holdover of “white supremacy.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has also understated the importance of real school accountability metrics, saying school success is measured in the amount of money spent, not grade performance. If that were the case, CPS schools would be producing some of the best outcomes in Illinois considering CPS spends more per student than the statewide average.
The attack on testing by CTU leadership followed by the board of education’s plan to move the district away from using testing to define student success is an attempt not only to hide underperformance but also to avoid calls for greater accountability for both schools and their teachers.
4) Ends a system of ranking schools
Student proficiency isn’t the only accountability metric the district wants to ignore. The plan also seeks to end the practice of ranking or labeling schools. Schools used to be ranked and labeled under CPS’ School Quality Rating Policy which ranked schools based on how students performed on state assessments, attendance and graduation rates.
The updated approach that will end this system of ranking places more consideration on schools’ resources, such as funds, training and staff, and schools’ conditions, such as culture, instruction and curriculum.
Martinez said the former system of ranking schools has caused “families to select schools with the highest rating and pitted schools against each other.”
But a system which no longer ranks schools threatens to inhibit information about schools and leave parents less able to make the most informed decisions about where they choose to send their children to school.
While the board views ending the practice of ranking schools as an avenue to create “shared responsibility for student success between the district and schools,” it actually takes away parents’ ability to responsibly choose a school that will best serve their child’s needs.
Chalkbeat Chicago found “roughly 44% of elementary school students enrolled at a school other than the one they were zoned for in the 2022-2023 school year, while about 75% of high schoolers did the same.” Chicago parents ought to be informed about the quality of their public schools so they can make the best decisions concerning their children’s education.
While the district has laid out its intention for the next five years, much of this remains up in the air as CTU negotiates its contract with CPS. In the end, anything bargained in CTU’s contract will control, and if the contract’s provisions contradict anything in the district’s plan, the contract will win out.