our CPS odyssey, part 2

We finally got our letter and found out that Ben got into Skinner West, a classical school. We unfortunately were not thrilled with Skinner when we went to visit their Open House in the fall, the only one they had. The gym was standing room only with parents. No one from the administration came to talk to us. Parents of current students who couldn't answer any questions led us around the building. It was very disorganized and discouraged us, despite the brand new building and its sparkling test scores (ranked #18 elementary school in the state).

Skinner West had another Open House for parents of students who were admitted. We were a little surprised to see how many asian parents were there, particularly first generation asian parents. The school is about 50% african-american, 25% asian-american, 20% caucasian and 5% latino. This, compared to the overall CPS statistics of 9.2% caucasian, 45.1% african-american, 3.6% asian, and 41.9% latino (source: Racial Ethnic Surveys).

Further, it was interesting to drill deeper into this data (if you click on one of the links, an Excel document will download with several different tabs) and see that, while the percentages of black & white students are approximately the same between gifted and classical schools, the percentage of asian students in classical students far exceeded the percentage of latino students, and it was exactly the opposite in the gifted schools. I would define a gifted school as a school for children who have exceptional reasoning/critical thinking abilities, things that can't be taught as easily, and a classical school for children who KNOW a lot of things, either naturally or through repetitive drilling and memorization. I'm very interested as to why this happens -- you could point to the cliched asian parent (i.e., Tiger Mother), but why is the asian attendance so low in the gifted schools?

Anyhow, the nice thing is that my son will fit in fairly well at Skinner, racially. As we live in a predominantly black neighborhood, as he gets older it is important to us that he has friends of all different races. We were much more impressed with Skinner during this last Open House. The principal seemed like she was on top of things, all of the parents had good things to say about it (though they did emphasize that there was going to be a LOT of homework) and we were able to take another tour of the school, this time with one of the classical Kindergarten teachers who was actually able to answer our questions. We really were impressed with her. She said that they start out with 30 students per classroom and don't add any more kids, but some kids end up moving or leaving the school. She had 25 kids in her classroom at that point. However, there is a neighborhood Kindergarten class that must take students who live within the boundary limits and they have 38 (!!!!) children in their class. 38!!

The kink in all of this is that we visited a Christian school where many of our friends from the neighborhood send their kids and we really liked it. It is reasonably priced and is committed to teaching children about God through bible memorization, chapels, bible class, and studying subjects via the biblical worldview. As I could not get Ben to memorize a bible verse without coercion and/or bribery, I would love for him to be able to get that at school! They also have daily recess, spanish, music, art, and gym class. Skinner offers either mandarin or spanish, library, music, art, and laboratory science (starts at 1st grade). No daily recess, though some teachers do take the kids out for recess on their own volition. Westside is not as diverse (mostly african-american), though there is currently a Korean boy in the preschool who I believe is going to be in the Kindergarten class next year. We also love the fact that Ben would already have community at Westside as a number of children we know go there and one of his good friends will be in his Kindergarten class. Plus, the Kindergarten class for this year has about 18 students in it, which seems very reasonable to me.

So, we're not entirely sure what we're going to do. We took the spot at Skinner because we would lose it if we didn't and this is our only CPS option as he didn't get into any of the magnets. He could always take the test again next year for 1st grade, but there are no guarantees. My heart tells me to send him to Westside Christian, but my head tells me Skinner... Probably we'll end up putting him in Skinner and if we're unhappy with it, we'll move him to Westside. In some ways, it would have been easier had he not gotten in anywhere at all!

My conclusion? CPS works if at least 2 of the following are true: (1) your child is smart (2) you live in the boundaries or a good neighborhood school (which are hard to find and housing costs are normally VERY high in those places) (3) the parent is motivated (4) you are politically connected (sad, but true) (5) you live within the boundaries of a good magnet school -- your chances of getting in via proximity lottery go WAY up. These factors hardly seem fair to the vast majority of students out there. It once again underscores the privilege of choice that wealthy, college-educated people have that most low-income people don't. Had Ben not gotten in anywhere, we could afford private school. I could (gulp) even homeschool if push came to shove. Watching Waiting for Superman (which in and of itself is an entirely separate blog post) really brought home the power of choice to me.