March 3, 2010

Chicago Public Schools officials today unveiled a new program that will offer 100 additional seats in four of the system’s selective enrollment high schools to top students from some of the city’s lowest-performing elementary schools. 

Chicago Public Schools officials also released preliminary information related to the ongoing selective enrollment high school admissions process.

The No Child Left Behind High School Choice Program would begin with the 2010-11 school year and would provide students from targeted low-performing elementary schools with another avenue through which they might gain entry into a selective enrollment high school. 

For the first time, CPS will transfer students into selective enrollment high schools using the student choice provisions contained in the federal NCLB law. The program also will help ensure continued racially diverse student bodies at the District’s selective enrollment high schools, officials said.

“This process provides an unprecedented opportunity for excellent students from our lowest-performing schools to learn in our most competitive high schools,” said Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Ron Huberman. “This process honors the intent of the No Child Left Behind legislation and gives meaningful choice to high-performing children at lower-performing schools.” 

In order to ensure that the NCLB process does not take seats away from the selective enrollment process, CPS is creating 100 additional seats at the four receiving high schools: Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, Walter Payton College Preparatory High School, Northside College Preparatory High School and Jones College Preparatory High School. 

Eligible students must attend eighth grade in one of the “sending” schools that will be identified by CPS. The school must have an ISAT meets/exceeds percentage of 55 percent or lower and an eligible student must have a stanine 7 in both math and reading on the ISAT, or EXPLORE test scores in math and reading at or above 70 percent.

CPS has identified 336 eligible students who attend 87 lower-performing schools, Huberman said. The District’s Office of Academic Enhancement will provide a list of eligible students for each targeted school, and those school officials will be responsible for notifying a student’s parent or guardian that they are being invited to participate in the NCLB High School Choice Program.  Notifications also will be mailed to the home addresses of eligible students.

“These are high-performing students with the capacity to succeed in our selective enrollment schools. Our analysis, however, showed that students in lower-performing schools apply to selective enrollment high schools at a lower rate compared to students at higher-performing schools,” Huberman said. “As a result, those students were significantly underrepresented in the selective enrollment process.”

Selective enrollment high school admissions for 2010-11 to date have been based on a one-year policy that was approved by the Chicago Board of Education late last year. That policy was established after a federal court judge vacated a longstanding desegregation consent decree last fall.

The policy provides for two categories of admission: one based on the point ranking of applicants drawn from such criteria as test scores and grades; the other based on point ranking from within four groups of applicants based on updated census tract data. 

CPS General Counsel Patrick Rocks stated that the end of the consent decree also allowed CPS to move forward with the implementation of the NCLB High School Choice Program. 

“When the federal courts return control to local school districts, districts are free to explore and implement student assignment options that best meet the needs of students,” Rocks said.

Huberman said 25 additional seats will be available at each of the four high schools under the NCLB High School Choice Program. Eligible students from targeted sending schools who did not previously take the selective enrollment high school placement exam or apply to any of the four “receiving” high schools also will be eligible for consideration under the NCLB process, he added.

Huberman promised to allocate additional resources to the four “receiving” schools to ensure the success of the students who transfer in the NCLB High School Choice Program.  These resources will permit receiving schools to provide summer programming and hire additional teachers and other personnel.  Each principal will be authorized to design a program that meets the needs of the individual students and the receiving school.    CPS is exploring transportation options for NCLB students that may include CTA transit cards and other modes of transportation.  

The Chicago Public Schools also released preliminary data related to the first round of offers recently made in the ongoing selective enrollment high school admissions process.    

For each of the selective enrollment high schools, CPS issued approximately 40 percent of the first round offer letters on the basis of rank order and the remaining offers based on rank order within the four categories of census tracts that were developed to create socio-economic diversity.

CPS announced that 13,056 students took the examination this year.  Offers were made based on a student’s composite score, the census tract in which a student resides, the order in which the student ranked schools on the application form and seat availability in each school.  Offer letters were mailed last week.  

CPS reported the following information for the nine selective enrollment high schools.  CPS officials cautioned that this is preliminary information related only to offer letters mailed last week and that additional steps in the admissions process must be completed before a final report can be generated.  Those steps include decisions made by individual students to accept or reject offers, potential second rounds of offers in schools with vacant seats, principal discretion selections, special education assignments and NCLB High School Choice Program selections. 

CPS also reported the total number of first round offers by school through the census tier process and in city-wide rank order.  CPS also reported estimated projections for principal discretion and additional seats for the NCLB High School Choice Program. 

About CPS

Chicago Public Schools serves 417,855 students in 675 schools. It is the nation’s third-largest school district.

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