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player ready...Demonstrating the limited impact of a federal law designed to allow children to flee struggling schools, just half of the Chicago children who asked to transfer were granted their request, according to figures released Friday.
Only 1,165 of the 2,407 pupils who sought to move were admitted to the school they wanted, according to the Chicago Public Schools. The rest were turned away because in many schools there were more requests than available slots.
In addition, it is questionable whether the moves will give students access to a substantially better education, according to a Tribune analysis. Most of the pupils who were granted transfers will enter schools that could be considered poor-performing because at least half of their test scores didn’t meet state standards in 2001.
The final number of pupils moving is remarkably small, given that almost 40 percent of the district’s 317,000 elementary students are enrolled in schools identified by the state as failing. But Chicago Public Schools officials succeeded in whittling down those pupils’ choices by putting many of the more desirable schools off limits.
They then persuaded federal officials to let them reduce the number of failing schools pupils could leave. In the end, about 29,000 Chicago students in 48 schools had the option to seek a transfer, but only about 8 percent applied by the Aug. 15 deadline.
“I was upset that we didn’t have more good schools to choose from,” said a mother from Reavis School, 834 E. 50th St., who did not apply for any of the options provided by the district. “The test scores at the schools they gave us weren’t much better.”
Letters notifying parents of whether they got the school they wanted began arriving in the mail Friday, and many parents expressed disappointment that so few children will be allowed to switch.
Spotlight on Gillespie
Parents from Gillespie School, 9301 S. State St., especially were upset since about a third of the school’s 861 pupils wanted to leave. At Gillespie, where 26 percent of last year’s test scores met state standards, 276 sought transfers, but only 40 got them.
“I felt bad about it because I did want them to be in another school,” said Gwendolyn Berry, 29, who was refused a transfer for two of her children from Gillespie to Kipling School, 9351 S. Lowe Ave., where 48 percent of test scores met standards.
Faced with another year at a school where she is dissatisfied, Berry said she might move to another neighborhood.
“You know how you go to other schools and it looks alive for the kids,” Berry said. “But Gillespie to me, it looks like a dead zone. . . . The kids, they just don’t want to learn.”
The mass exodus sought by Gillespie parents–the school had the most transfer requests of all 48 schools–was a wake-up call for Chicago central administrators.
“It’s very revealing,” said schools chief Arne Duncan. “Clearly, there are some kind of deep-seated issues at Gillespie. There are several schools that we are looking at, but that one is of particular concern.”
Duncan said he will send staff to Gillespie next week to meet with its administration “to explore how we can do a better job in the coming school year.” Gillespie Principal Beverly Slater was unavailable for comment Friday.
The two schools that received the most requests to be admitted–Turner-Drew Language Academy and Galileo Scholastic Academy–are both magnet schools where more than half of the test scores met standards.
Turner-Drew, 9300 S. Princeton Ave., took only 19 of the 155 pupils who wanted to move in, and Galileo, 820 S. Carpenter St., took 15 of 110. Dixon Elementary, 8306 S. St. Lawrence Ave., a neighborhood school whose reading instruction has been praised, had 99 pupils apply and accepted five.
The federal Leave No Child Behind Act, signed in January, was created in part to give parents across the nation the choice to move their kids out of schools identified as failing on annual tests.
In Illinois, schools qualified for transfers this fall if fewer than 50 percent of their scores on the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests met standards in 1999 and scores then did not progress at a fast enough pace over the next two years.
Based on those criteria, the Illinois State Board of Education identified 232 elementary schools as failing, including 179 in Chicago with about 125,000 pupils.
Choices were limited
But, acknowledging they had few places to put students, Chicago school officials, with federal approval, decided to give pupils in only 48 schools the chance to move to 100 selected schools. Most of those schools were only marginally better than those identified as failing.
In addition, children could only request a single school, and it could not be more than 3 miles away from their current school.
Officials justified their approach by saying the district already had a liberal choice system that allows parents to transport their children to any neighborhood school with available space, or to seek admission to magnet and gifted schools.
Duncan said the anemic response from parents to the choice option “shows that the majority of our neighborhood schools are improving and those parents who want choice have already elected it.”
Some parents said, however, the lack of attractive alternatives discouraged them from taking advantage of the chance to move their children.
The best-performing schools were the hardest to get into. Of the nearly 1,000 pupils who applied to move into these schools, fewer than one-third were chosen. Of the those who tried to get into schools that are only marginally better than the ones they left, 63 percent got in.
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Law’s limited impact
Only about 4 percent of the Chicago elementary and middle school pupils who qualified to ask for a transfer will be switching to better schools.
Qualified to ask for transfer: 29,000
Total requests: 2,407
Approved requests: 1,165
Not approved: 1,242
Source: Chicago Public Schools
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Schools with most requests, transfers
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Under the No Child Left Behind Act, 1,165 Chicago elementary and middle school pupils will be allowed to transfer to one of 100 passing schools this year.
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TRANSFERRING TO
Receiving most requests
SCHOOL APPLIED TAKEN
Turner-Drew 155 19
Galileo Scholastic 110 15
Dixon Elementary 99 5
J. Colemon Elem. 74 20
Jackson Academy 70 5
Accepting most transfers
SCHOOL APPLIED TAKEN
Ericson Elementary 59 35
Bennett Elementary 45 33
Wadsworth Elem. 59 31
Burnside Academy 57 29
Orozco Academy 28 27
TRANSFERRING FROM
With most requests to leave
SCHOOL APPLIED TAKEN
Gillespie Elem. 276 40
Esmond Elem. 94 38
T. Jefferson Elem. 94 23
Mt. Vernon Elem. 87 49
Smith Elem. 85 31
Losing most pupils
SCHOOL APPLIED TAKEN
Mt. Vernon Elem. 87 49
Morgan Elem. 83 47
Curtis Elem. 65 45
Bass Elem. 59 44
Gillespie Elem. 276 40
Source: Chicago Public Schools
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