Chicago Public Schools leaders, students and faculty gathered at Gage Park High School early this week to celebrate the district’s record 82.9% four-year graduation rate. In addition, the district boasted $1.5 billion in scholarships awarded to the Class of 2022, as well as freshman-on-track rates rising to pre-pandemic levels, a measure of the percentage of students likely to graduate.
Just two days later, though, district officials offered a more “sobering” look at student achievement with a presentation to the Board of Education of new testing data highlighting what they called “an overall decline in student performance.”
The districtwide data showed student proficiency in math and reading fell, with officials proposing a blueprint for addressing gaps that puts a priority on equitable access to resources.
These proficiency declines were based on student assessments conducted during the pandemic and are in line with state and national trends, CPS officials said. Data from the Nation’s Report Card showed that CPS students are scoring lower in math and reading than in years past. The report is conducted every year, testing a representative sample of CPS students. Over 5,000 students across 140 schools tested this year in fourth and eighth grades, Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova said.
The differences in reading scores were not statistically significant, though the five-year trend is downward, Chkoumbova said, In math, however, scores fell significantly in both fourth and eighth grade. In addition to these declines, opportunity gaps are widening in some areas, specifically in fourth grade reading and math, driven by falling scores among Black and Latino students, according to the district.
Data from the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, as well as from PSAT and SAT tests, reveal similar declines. The biggest drop was experienced by ninth graders, where 36% of students who took the PSAT exam met benchmarks in 2022, compared to 47% in 2019, according to data from CPS.
“While the data can be very sobering, we know that our students have the resilience to rebound,” Chkoumbova said.
CPS CEO Pedro Martinez emphasized that the declines do not represent a deficiency of CPS students’ ability but rather the impact of the pandemic.
“Tests are not designed to adjust for that trauma,” he said.
For now, Martinez said he’s confident this school year will serve as a “recovery” year. Meanwhile, CPS’ blueprint, which he calls a “reimagining,” will target pre-existing achievement gaps that the pandemic only worsened.
Afternoon Briefing
Daily
Chicago Tribune editors’ top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon.
CPS’ plan centers on strengthening its “instructional core” approach, which targets quality curriculums, teacher practices and student engagement. Immediate goals are to increase the number of teachers in classrooms, expand CPS’ Tutor Corps and ensure schools have ample intervention staff to increase student support. Schools with the highest needs will receive priority for resources.
To manage the current teacher shortage, Martinez said CPS has hired more than 100 certified substitute teachers who each teach the same class every day to provide stability.
CPS’ plan also involves empowering each school under the thinking that “improvement comes from within,” Chkoumbova said. This approach involves budgeting for school leadership teams and professional team developments, she said.
As for CPS’ ability to fund its programming, Martinez said in the short term, the district’s enrollment declines provide an advantage to leverage resources where they are needed most. But he emphasized that stabilizing enrollment will be the crucial in the future.
Martinez said long term, CPS will also look beyond test scores as metrics of success but will also consider qualities like being “ethical and collaborative leaders,” citing conversations with human resources directors and other business officials.
“If we want social mobility, we need our students to get high-paying jobs,” Martinez said.
