Interventionist Teresa Przybyslawski gives a student instruction at Chicago's Brunson Elementary School last year. The new strategic plan adopted by the Chicago Board of Education focuses on improving academic achievement for Black students and increasing the number of students who go to their neighborhood schools, among other priorities. (Christian K. Lee for Chalkbeat)
The Chicago Board of Education has approved a plan that maps out Chicago Public Schools’ priorities for the next five years and seeks to encourage more children to attend school within their neighborhoods.
The plan, revealed publicly for the first time on Monday and approved by the board Wednesday, does not include CPS policy changes. But it sets out a slew of priorities and goals, including reducing chronic absenteeism, increasing state reading and math scores, and reducing teacher vacancies.
It also seeks to beef up resources and funding for neighborhood schools, where enrollment has declined over the past decade, and blames current “competitive enrollment policies” — presumably for selective enrollment and other choice schools — for “pitting schools against each other” and perpetuating inequity in CPS.
Despite that implicit criticism, the plan doesn’t make changes to the city’s school choice system, which includes selective enrollment, magnet, and charter schools that children apply to, some of which require an admissions exam. That board said in December that it wanted to rethink school choice in this strategic plan, with a goal of moving “away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.”
That choice system is coveted by many families who want more freedom over where to send their children. But it has also been sharply criticized by families and Mayor Brandon Johnson for its high-stakes testing and admissions that can be stressful for kids and families.
Read the full story on Chalkbeat Chicago.
