19 of 20 schools touted by Chicago Teachers Union see reading lag in 2024
The Chicago Teachers Union is pushing to expand the 20 “sustainable community schools” in the district. But the model doesn’t work: fewer students are proficient, absenteeism is higher.
Chicago Teachers Union leadership is pushing for more “sustainable community schools,” despite existing community schools producing poorer student results at a higher cost.
The district already has 20 sustainable community schools, and all but one have lower proficiency rates than the district. They are demanding 180 more community schools, and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates claims the union is close to securing 70 more schools in the ongoing contract negotiations.
Here’s a closer look at what “sustainable community schools” are claimed to do – and how, in reality, students at these schools fared worse, again, in the most recent 2024 Illinois Report Card.
Clearly, CTU is pushing a poor model for Chicago students and taxpayers. The question is: why?
The “sustainable community schools” model
Supporters claim sustainable community schools extend the functioning of a school beyond the traditional realm of education. The model integrates additional student services coordinated by the school with outside organizations, such as housing or food assistance, medical or dental care, mental health services, English language or parenting classes.
CTU claims the model promotes improved outcomes, such as decreased absenteeism rates, increased student performance and improved school culture. With dwindling enrollment in CPS, CTU markets the expansion of sustainable community schools as an attempt at “fortifying neighborhood schools.”
But data from the Illinois State Board of Education shows CTU’s claims are wrong. The outcomes for students at these costly schools are worse than at other district schools, producing inferior academic results and greater absenteeism.
The model has failed, with most schools performing below the district average
Districtwide, CPS students suffer from poor proficiency rates and high chronic absenteeism. Yet students at the district’s sustainable community schools do even worse.
Data from Chicago’s 20 community schools, which includes 12 elementary schools and eight high schools, shows nearly every school produces poorer proficiency rates and higher chronic absenteeism compared to the district at large. These flaws come at a higher per-student price compared to the district’s average spending on a student.
Sustainable community elementary schools are producing poor outcomes
Proficiency in early grades, particularly reading proficiency in third grade, is a predictor of a student’s later academic success. Most CPS students already perform below grade level standards in reading and math.
Yet in the 12 CPS sustainable elementary schools, only one has a higher reading proficiency rate than the district’s. All 12 sustainable elementary schools have lower math proficiency rates.
The absenteeism rate in eight of the 12 sustainable elementary schools is higher than the absenteeism rate across all schools in CPS, counter to CTU’s claims the model decreases absenteeism. In two sustainable elementary schools, more than half of the students were chronically absent in the 2023-2024 school year.
The district is spending more on these schools to get worse results. In nine of the 12 sustainable elementary schools, spending per student was higher than the average per-pupil spending districtwide in fiscal year 2024 – which is already nearly $20,000 per student for site-based expenditures, only excluding certain expenditures such as capital and debt servicing. The highest per-pupil spending comes from Yates Elementary School, where the average per student spending was over $30,000 in the 2023-2024 school year. That is over $10,000 more than the district average, yet the students at Yates are performing worse than the district average.
Sustainable community high schools are failing students
The story is similar for the eight high schools using the sustainable model: proficiency is lower and absenteeism is higher. But outperforming the district average isn’t a high bar to meet when just 22% of 11th graders districtwide could read at grade level in 2024 and just 19% perform math proficiently.
Every sustainable community high school in CPS had lower reading and math proficiency than the district average for high schools.
Fewer than 1 in 10 juniors at Chicago’s sustainable community high schools could read or do math at grade level on the SAT in 2024. In two high schools, not a single 11th grader could perform math proficiently.
Absenteeism is significantly higher at sustainable community high schools – by 26 percentage points or more – than the district absenteeism rate. And only one of the community high schools has a higher graduation rate than the districtwide rate.
As with the community grade schools, these poorer results come with a much higher price tag. Six of the community high schools spent more per student than the CPS average of $19,908 in site-level expenditures per student. At Uplift Community High School, per student spending reached nearly $50,000 in the 2023-2024 school year, nearly $30,000 more than the district average.
CTU support for the failed sustainable community schools model doesn’t make sense
As a result of CTU’s 2016 contract negotiations, CPS committed to creating the first 10 “sustainable community schools” in the district. Then CTU pushed to add 10 more of the schools during its strike in 2019, which forced students to miss 11 school days and resulted in a contract estimated to cost Chicago taxpayers $1.5 billion.
Now CTU wants 180 more: a tenfold increase in failure?
The expansion of community schools is part of CTU’s agenda. By creating these schools through contract negotiations, CTU is exerting control over the district through the collective bargaining process, binding the district to a failed model.
In the meantime, CTU opposes other models, such as successful selective enrollment schools and charter schools. It succeeded in helping kill a tax credit scholarship program for 15,000 low-income kids.
This preference for a failed model calls into question CTU’s intent, and whether it has the best interests of students in mind. Or does it just want to add union members through a school model that costs more to produce less?
CPS is already struggling to fulfill its task to educate the children of Chicago. Instead of pushing to increase sustainable community schools and expanding the duties of Chicago schools, CPS ought to focus on Job No. 1: effectively educating students so they can achieve successful futures.