Mayor Rahm Emanuel and new leaders of Chicago Public Schools have been pushing for a longer school day and year to raise student performance. But last week’s state test results show that charter schools–which typically have more instructional time–actually have a lower percentage of students exceeding state standards.
Overall, state scores on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test were up in Chicago Public Schools. The percentage of students who exceeded state standards increased, but the number still remained low—16.6 percent, up from 14.7 percent last year. The percentage who met state standard increased to 73.9 percent, up from 68.5 percent.
A breakdown by school type shows students at selective-enrollment schools most exceeded state standards, followed in order by magnet schools, neighborhood schools, charter schools and turnaround schools, according to a Chicago News Cooperative analysis of the results. Turnaround schools are those that had been overhauled because they were previously identified as the district’s lowest performers.
Both neighborhood and charter schools saw an increase in the number of students meeting state standards—6 and 4 percentage point increases, respectively. Jean-Claude Brizard, chief executive of CPS, said the district “can feel good that we’re making positive strides with the meets number, but the real test is exceeds.” Both groups of schools posted a roughly 2 percent increase in students exceeding state standards, but the numbers still remained low.
In terms of exceeding state standards, selective enrollment schools fared the best, with 63.8 percent, magnet schools had 26.3 percent, neighborhood schools had 15.3 percent, charters had 13.8 percent and turnaround schools had 8.3 percent.
In terms of meeting state standards, selective enrollment schools still did the best, with 99.2 percent, magnet schools had 83 percent, charters with 75 percent, neighborhood schools had 72.8 percent and turnaround schools had 62.7 percent.
The low numbers for exceeding standards have been used to argue for a longer day and year, which CPS now has the power to implement. In his push for more classroom time, Emanuel has repeatedly—as recently as Monday night—cited the charter school model.
But the fact that charter schools and neighborhood schools performed nearly the same, despite the charters’ additional classroom time, suggests that the impact of more time is unclear.
On Tuesday, Noemi Donoso, the new CPS chief education officer, said, “Just extending a school day doesn’t mean, by itself, that you’re going to have high performing schools. It’s not going to be simple.”
Although turnaround schools have the lowest average scores, those run by the Academy of Urban School Leadership showed the most significant gains from last year—a 9.5 percent increase from last year in percentage of students meeting state standards. A.U.S.L. will get an additional $6.4 million from CPS in the next school year to expand its teacher training services at two more elementary schools—Morton and Howe.
In the past several years, parents, teachers and experts have grown concerned that an emphasis on testing in CPS—at times students are taking a standardized test every five weeks—has limited learning, which in turn affects performance on standardized tests. Barbara Radner, director of the Center for Urban Education, works with struggling schools in Chicago and said the scores on the state test could have been higher if teachers were given more time to teach rather than prepare for tests.
“There’s a difference between assess and test,” Radner said. “We need a better day. If it’s longer and it’s more of the same, it’s not going to make a difference.”
Elaine Allensworth, director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, echoed Radner’s concerns about testing. “The more you spend time on test prep, the less you actually learn. A lot of schools will spend a quarter of instructional time just preparing for tests.”
Donoso said the fundamental concept of testing can put schools in a difficult position when it comes to planning curriculum and schedules.
“I think it’s hard because that’s kind of the way testing works,” Donoso said. “It drives the behavior at schools and in the classrooms. So the challenge is to make sure that we have assessments that are aligned with the vision of the curriculum we want in the classrooms.”
In 2014, the state test will switch to a new, more rigorous exam that will align with the Common Core, a set of curriculum standards adopted by states across the country to better prepare students for college.
Donoso, who is replacing Charles Payne, the interim chief education officer, is responsible for developing the district’s curriculum strategy and working with school leaders to carry it out. Her main focus in the coming years will be implementing the Common Core curriculum, which is designed to develop analytical skills beyond those currently tested on the ISAT.
Radner said CPS “needs to step it up” or scores are going to crash when the new test is given in 2014, calling the change “the biggest shift I’ve ever seen.”
“We can’t be complacent,” she said “This is a whole different generation of standards and assessment.”
Breaking Down The Test Results
An analysis of school-based data on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test showed strong gains at turnaround schools, increases at every grade level and widening achievement gaps. A jump in scores overall in 2006 can be attributed to a reformatting of the ISAT assessment and a resetting of the cutoff for meeting and exceeding standards.
A breakdown of results by school type shows that although CPS schools are performing better overall, the percentage of students exceeding state standards remains small. District officials and education experts say students who exceed state standards at the elementary level are more likely to graduate high school and go on to college. The “exceeds” metric was used by CPS leaders to push for a longer school day and year.
A breakdown of students exceeding standards by school type over the last ten years shows that selective enrollment schools, which require an entrance exam, perform best. Magnet schools, which draw students from across the city and offer special curricula and programming not available at traditional schools, are consistently high performing. Neighborhood schools, which take students from the immediate geographical area and typically do not have special programming or extra supports, have shown a steady increase, but low overall results. Charter schools, which enroll students based on a lottery and usually receive some level of private money to operate, perform about the same as neighborhood schools. Finally, turnaround schools, which are schools that have been overhauled because they were previously identified as the district’s lowest performers, performed the lowest but made the largest gains in the last year.
There is a large disparity in the performances of white students and their African-American and Hispanic counterparts in CPS schools. Though scores for African-American students and Hispanic students have steadily increased, a higher percentage of white students exceed state standards—a strong indicator of success in high school and beyond – and have showed larger gains in the last two years.
An analysis of state scores by grade shows an increase from 2010 across all grades. Third grade had the highest percentage of students exceeding standards, while eighth grade had the highest number of students meeting state standards.
The low percentage of students exceeding state standards in reading, especially at the eighth grade level where they declined to 5 percent, is cause for concern among district officials. Last week, preliminary scores for the eighth grade EXPLORE test, which is a better assessment of college readiness, showed that only 30 percent of eighth grade students hit targets.
In math, CPS third graders posted the most impressive scores with 30 percent of students exceeding standards. Fifth grade students were the lowest, with 11 percent exceeding standards.
-Charts by Juan-Pablo Velez, text by Rebecca Vevea
I know this story is about the case for a longer school day, but I think the lead is buried.
What the data show is that the traditional neighborhood schools are outperforming charter schools and turnaround schools! That’s a story.
In light of the millions and millions of dollars spent and the careers upended in the turnaround process, wouldn’t it make sense to put the focus back on the system that is working best?
For all the rehetoric about failed schools, I would have expected the neighborhood schools to be scraping the bottom. How about a fresh look at the neighborhood schools that are succeeding to tease out the reasons why and apply that knowledge to others. It would certainly be less expensive and less disruptive than building a second system of privatized schools.
No kidding, talk about a buried lede..
Still, it’s a concisely written article about the actual data, which will be utterly ignored by the mayor because it contradicts the narrative behind his manic obsession with the charters.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this reporter is soon maligned in the Trib as a leftist.
What a funny article. If you subtract out 5 large majority African American neighborhood schools (read the profiles at: http://www.cpsturnaround.org/schools/)from the “neighborhood schools” and label them as “turnaround schools” and then define “charter schools” to not include high performing non-neighborhood schools, you can magically claim that neighborhood schools outperform charter schools. Pretty much proves its time to abandon the neighborhood school concept.
What stood out to me more was that the selective enrollment schools had more students to excede standards. Many of our lowest performing schools would do better if they didn’t have to accept all the most challenging students. Moreover, the higher performing schools wouldn’t excel as consistently if they had to deal with a larger challenging population. I work at a school with 76% on free and reduced lunch. The top performing school in the same county has 5% of their population on free and reduced lunch. It’s socio economics…people. There is no silver bullet within this current system.
Want a silver bullet? Look at top performing public charter schools in Chicago.
LEARN Charter School Network serves about 2,000 low-income elementary school students in Chicago–98 percent of their students get free or reduced lunch. LEARN students outperform their peers by 24 percentage points or more on the state test. Moreover, 99 percent of their alumni graduate from high school and 95 percent attend college. Their students spend 7.5 hours each day in school.
Chicago International Charter Schools serve about 9,000 students at 14 campuses in Chicago’s neighborhoods of highest need. Their students outperform their peers by 12 percentage points. They fully expect to close the achievement gap by 2013. More than 90 percent of their students enroll in college. Their students are in school for 7.5 hours each day.
Clearly, both these networks are top performers. And consider the alternative offered by the typical Chicago public school: The shortest school day in the country, about half of all students dropping out, and 8 percent of those who graduate earning a college degree.
Time on task matters. We urge Chicago Public Schools to expand the school day for all students. But we also urge CPS to make the most of every minute in school. Top-performing charter schools support teachers, students and families in ways all schools can and should. CPS must hold every public school accountable to deliver meaningful results regardless of school model.
The students of Chicago deserve no less.
I find it so disheartening that we are focusing only on longer school days when statistics are showing us daily that social status, economics and an inequitable dispersing of federal funding are the primary reasons schools (primarily urban schools) are not comparable with predominately white schools in suburban districts. We are coming up with every possible solution except what is staring us in the face. Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka said “separate but equal” is not only unconstitutional but impossible. As long as whites continue to redefine and redistrict and reconfigure school districts or create new schooling systems (i.e. Charter schools) we continue down a path that has already been dubbed inequitable by the court systems. The real problem is that law has loopholes so we repackage “separate but equal” into charter schools or private schools. Charter schools are depicted as the savior to the horrible public schools when they are (Statistics show only 1 of 5 charter schools outperform public schools) fairing no better. It is simply another way to circumvent the law and continue the system of separate but equal. We have not yet resolved these basic issues, how can we therefore address longer days while ignoring the “elephant” in the room.
Your premise is weak and inconsistent. On one hand, you demand that black schools receive more money, whilst you challenge the outcomes from charter schools…which receive more money. So, what is it you want?
Further, do you really think that the only thing an African-American student needs to succeed is access to a better-funded, suburban school? Then please explain how black students fail to succeed in Oak Park, or Naperville. Better yet, account for the resounding failure of busing, everywhere it has been practised.
To my eye, the story is that 60% of charter school students MEET Illinois standards – a mark that is not met even by magnets, not to mention neighborhood schools. Walk before you run, people.
I would say that having 60% of charter students meet standards is, in fact, outperforming their peers.
As I read this article Mr. Brizard is putting aside more money to give to magnet schools. Is that really where the funding is needed? What we appear to need is a new organization to support and lobby for the neighborhood schools. Every other group appears to have a champion pushing their cause. How about support for those students who have no opportunities or choices? We know these opportunities are only afforded to students who have parents who have the knowledge, wherewithal, ability or proactiveness to fight for their children. We owe all of our students a good education regardless of their home or background. This is their civil right.It should not depend on their parents. Best of luck to all of our schools, but especially our neighborhood schools. You keep fighting and coming through no matter how much you are “put down” by the powers that be. Stay strong and remember that our children depend on you.