“Chicago’s far-left mayor announced plans this past week to do away with eleven ‘high-achieving selective-enrollment schools’ in order to increase ‘equity,'” reports The College Fix.
Chicago Board of Education head Pedro Martinez claimed the selective-school system causes “stratification and inequity,” and announced a five-year “transformation” plan to abolish it.
The board plans to vote on the plan tomorrow. At least two board members, the president and vice president, appear to favor Johnson’s plan.
President Jianan Shi complains that selective schools result in students being “pitted against one another” and “schools” being “pitted against one another.”
The selective schools that would be abolished are among America’s best, reports the Daily Mail. Walter Payton College Prep ranks 10th, Northside College Prep is #37 nationally, and Jones College Prep is #60 nationally.
An editorial by the Chicago Tribune points out that Johnson broke a campaign promise not to abolish the selective schools. His “precise words” were “a Johnson administration would not end selective enrollment at CPS schools.”
“There are some spectacularly weaselly words in play here,” the Tribune observes. “You can keep, say, Northside College Prep and not ‘dismantle’ it, but everyone knows that the moment it ceases to be a selective-enrollment school, privileging (often low-income) kids who want to learn, it ceases to be Northside College Prep as currently known.”
Right now, 94 percent of Northside’s students are proficient in math and 95 percent in reading.
In response to Board President Shi’s objections to inter-school competition, the Tribune notes that
The U.S. is a democracy that operates under a free-market system. Such a system is necessary for personal freedom and economic growth, but it is necessarily based on competition. What does Shi think selective colleges and universities are doing in their admissions process if they are not pitting one student against another? What does he think other countries that better educate all their kids are doing?
Last month, the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Hess lamented the harms caused by the pursuit of “equity”, notes The College Fix, citing “elimination of advanced math, middle school algebra, and basic skills tests for graduation, not to mention basic student accountability — such as getting assignments in on time, passing exams, and respecting teachers.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has proposed radical housing policies that would shrink the supply of housing in his city, increasing homelessness. And his office is calling for rent control, even though economists say rent control shrinks the quantity and quality of housing.
In August, “Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson…defended teenagers who looted a 7-11 convenience store,” reported The Daily Caller.
