Chicago school officials put 212 schools on probation this year, almost three times the number slapped with the designation last year.
But the dramatic increase says more about changes in the school system’s internal accountability process than it does about changes at the schools themselves.
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In February, the district announced that 40 percent of elementary pupils must meet state standards on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test or national norms on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, up from 25 percent last year.
In high school, 30 percent of juniors must meet standards on the Prairie State Achievement Examination to keep a school off probation, up from the previous threshold of 15 percent.
Last year, 82 schools were put on probation.
The changes put the district’s standards closer to those imposed by the state under the federal No Child Left Behind reform.
And given the sharp bump in standards, school officials said they found some good news in the numbers: They had expected as many as 289 schools to be on the probation list, but 75 schools improved enough to meet the new standard and avoid the stigma of the probation label.
Another 10 schools were closed, while 8 others dropped unexpectedly below the probation cutoff.
For the first time, no schools came off probation.
“We needed to raise the bar because when we talked about 25 percent of kids meeting standards…we were in essence saying it was OK for 75 percent of kids to not meet standards,” said Javier Botana, who runs the district’s No Child Left Behind programs.
In addition to raising the bar, school officials have also changed what it means to be on probation.
Under the policy adopted by former schools chief Paul Vallas, a team of experts would be dispatched to each probation school, including an “external partner” such as an education consultant and a business manager who was intended to free up time for school administration to spend more time in classrooms.
When a school is put on probation now, fewer outsiders are sent to the school, a change that receives mixed reviews from principals.
Instead, central administrators said they want to focus improvement efforts on a few key areas.
Probation schools must now hire an additional reading specialist, create full-day kindergartens, reduce class size in kindergarten through 3rd grade and devote more money to professional development, all out of their discretionary funds.
Barbara Eason-Watkins, the district’s chief education officer who once worked as a probation manager under Vallas, said many of the district’s efforts now support the main educational priority–teaching children how to read.
“I think that probation for us is really a strategy to help schools improve,” Watkins said.
For some schools just under the cutoff, Thursday’s list was disheartening.
Aleen Donaldson, principal of Casals Elementary School in Humboldt Park, said this is the first time her school has been on probation during its 14 years of existence; 39.8 percent of her students met standards, just below the threshold.
She admits she shed some tears when she found out.
“We were disappointed,” she said. “My staff has worked really hard. We are just a little dumbfounded as to why we didn’t push up a few notches. I felt really good about the program.”
Mather High School in West Ridge also joined the list of probation schools for the first time.
Principal John Butterfield said it’s a shame, especially because the school’s reading score went up six points this year. Like Casals, Mather was just shy of the bar.
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A school can come off the list if more than 40 percent of students meet standards for two consecutive years, or if certain benchmarks for significant progress are met, even if the percentage is still below the 40 percent mark.