A Renaissance for Chicago’s Public Schools

Medill News Service • August 29, 2008

“Did you get those tiles dropped yet? Is it too late? People are walking in. It’s too late.”

As visitors trickled in to the grand opening of the Community Services West Career Academy on Thursday, last-minute preparations were still clearly being made. Workers shuffled through the halls of the former bottle cap factory carrying brushes and masonry tools, wrapping up months of work needed to launch the newest school under Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 initiative.

Community Services West is a contract school, meaning it is less restricted than traditional Chicago Public Schools in defining its own educational philosophy. The school’s governing council is free to plan a curriculum and schedule best suited to the specialized needs of its students, most of whom intend to pursue careers in the culinary industry.

In addition to providing vocational training, Community Services West helps academically at-risk students get on track to pursue higher education, said the school’s co-director, Myra Sampson.

“It offers a range of opportunities, which is really necessary for students who have not had an abundance of resources,” Sampson said.

Mayor Richard Daley rolled out the Renaissance 2010 program in 2004 in response to declining student performance throughout Chicago’s public school system.

The initiative set the bold goal of opening 100 new charter, contract and performance schools by 2010. These schools eschew the standard Chicago Public Schools model, swapping strict institutional policies for expectations of higher levels of attendance, graduation and success on standardized tests. CPS approves and authorizes each Renaissance 2010 school, agreeing upon firm performance targets that must be met within a five-year period.

“The charters are not bound by the overly managed mandates about curriculum, about structure of the school day, about structure of the length of the school year, professional development, staffing matters, and about budget decisions,” said Elizabeth Evans, executive director of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. “In exchange for autonomy, they heighten the degree of accountability.”

By this fall, 76 of the schools will have been opened, including 21 of them opening this year.

Overseen by CPS’ Office of New Schools, the Renaissance 2010 schools have thus far shown signs of making progress in student achievement over the last several years. Students at charter schools performed better on standardized tests than their CPS counterparts, with 68.7 percent reaching or exceeding state standards as compared to 64.1 percent in traditional schools.

Attendance rates at charter schools were six percentage points higher than the CPS average, and graduation rates were 11 points higher.

Despite these initial successes, charter schools are magnets for controversy in the overcrowded districts in which they are opened. Rather than attempt to reform underperforming schools, CPS tends to close them, consolidate them with other schools, or “turn them around” by replacing entire teaching staffs and curricula.

Schools that have historically been plagued by truancy, high dropout rates or poor student performance are sometimes too far gone to be salvaged, said Linda Lenz, publisher of the school reform publication Catalyst Chicago.

“There’s been substantial research to show that it’s much harder to change a school that has been working badly for a really long time than to start afresh where you don’t have to battle an old culture,” Lenz said.

When a school does close, usually a new school will open in the area to accommodate the displaced students.

If the new school does not perform significantly better than its predecessor, people in the community sometimes question why the change was necessary to begin with. Jaime Guzman, director of external relations at the Office of New Schools, said that while the adjustment can be difficult for some, the end result is worth the transition period.

“A lot of times when you have new things, things changing in a particular community, you’ll have folks that are skeptical and ask questions,” Guzman said. “You find that the community really votes with their feet. If they like the proposed school and what they’re about, they’ll send their children there.”

CPS closed or consolidated 10 schools in 2008.

Evans disputes the notion that there is a direct correlation between closing schools and opening new ones under Ren 2010. “In most cases in Chicago, there has not been a close-reopen,” she said. “Charters were opening before CPS ever closed a single school, and charters have opened across the state without any schools being closed.”

“We’re really about the birthing of schools,” said Office of New Schools Executive Director Josh Edelman. “The closing of schools is something that is done outside of our office. We’re focused on finding great operators.”

There are many who disagree, however. Some see charter schools as unnecessary at best and burdensome to the community at worst.

“We do not believe that closing schools is the way to improve schools,” said Rosmaria Genova, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Teachers Union. “We have a problem whenever you’re draining money from traditional schools that all students have access to.”

The union, which represents more than 32,000 teachers throughout the CPS system, has a somewhat rocky relationship with charter schools, which are not allowed to hire teachers under the union’s collective bargaining agreement. Charter teachers are free to join other unions if they so choose.

Genova’s point about access reflects an ongoing concern that Renaissance 2010 schools, because they require applications and do not admit students based on geographic location alone, exclude students who would otherwise be able to excel in such environments. Once a charter’s roll is full, all remaining prospective students are placed in a lottery to decide who will be awarded vacant seats.

Some community members worry that charters are herding the most successful students away from traditional public schools, a view that Evans said is misguided. A 2008 study by the RAND Corporation found that charter schools do not “skim the cream” of top students from other schools, and that differences in initial academic performance between the two groups of students were insignificant.

The study also indicated that the schools were not racially stratifying their communities, as each race of students tended to leave schools in about the same rate represented on campus.

Funding is another key issue in the Renaissance 2010 discussion. Like traditional CPS schools, charter schools rely on funding from the local and state governments, measured as a total cost per pupil. Illinois law requires that charters receive less per-pupil funding than their CPS counterparts, presenting them with a larger initial hurdle to overcome to get a new school fully in motion.

“Under state law, the charters are underfunded, as compared to other public schools,” Evans said. “The metric is less than a dollar per dollar, which we think is incredibly unfair and irrational, given that every child should have the same public investment.”

To meet this need, the Renaissance Schools Fund was established to invest in the critical early years of a school’s life, a two-year period in which the organization provides up to $500,000 toward startup expenses. During this time the school phases in grades of students rather than enroll them all at one time.

Independent fundraising is also important to a Ren 2010 school’s budget, said Katheryn Hayes, communications director of the Renaissance Schools Fund, but she added that there are a number of other factors that determine the needs of each individual school.

“More funding is not the end of the story,” Hayes said. “There are other very important pieces to the equation of creating a school that performs for students—particularly schools in underserved communities—for instance, quality of curriculum, teacher training, parent engagement, not to speak of the school’s ability to innovate.”

Moving into the coming academic year, Renaissance 2010 is keeping pace with its goal of 100 new schools in seven years. Demand is constantly high, as an estimated 13,000 Chicago children await placement.

CPS has identified 25 “priority communities” throughout the city in which overcrowding or poor performance has created a demand for better schools. Renaissance 2010 schools have been opened in 14 of these areas, and the Office of New Schools has set its sights on its next four priority communities: East Garfield Park, West Garfield Park, South Shore and South Chicago. These areas have not been served since the inception of Renaissance 2010, Guzman said, but several proposals are currently being put together by members of the community, including parents, current and former students, aldermen and other civic officials.

Guzman said that by emphasizing the community’s role in deciding where the new schools will go and how they will ultimately be run, the organizers of Renaissance 2010 schools have been presented with increasingly stronger proposals from the public that each school will serve.

— Rob Heidrick