Closing down underperforming public schools in Chicago has historically been a traumatic process, with battle lines drawn between affected communities and district leaders.
School closures take on an even greater significance this year, because they are designed to be the first step in the strategic plan of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his handpicked school administration to overhaul the struggling system.
The Chicago Public School district, which has closed about 50 schools in the last decade, this year is expected to increase the number of schools being turned around and to expand the number of charter schools. Officials must release the list of schools they plan to shutter by Dec. 1.
The leader of the process is Oliver Sicat, 32, the district’s new chief portfolio officer, a newly-created position focused on providing, in the words of Chief Executive Jean-Claude Brizard, a “high-quality seat” in a good school for every child. Sicat is a former teacher and principal—positions Emanuel said would be on the resumes of his new district leaders.
The son of Filipino immigrants, Sicat grew up in Santa Ana, Calif., where he said his parents had to game the system to get him into a good public school.
“I learned early on that there are different inequities based on where you live,” Sicat said, noting that at one point, his parents used a different address to get him into a better school.
“Looking back now, I see exactly why my parents were doing that,” he said. “But I think there’s something really unfair about it. There’s no reason why families and parents should have to do that.”
If Sicat is successful in the task handed to him by Emanuel and Brizard, families will not have to gamble on where their children go to school. After low-performing schools are closed, Sicat and district leaders say they plan to reorganize or replace them with schools managed by both public and private operators that have proven track records of success.
When Arne Duncan, now the U.S. secretary of education, served as chief executive, he sought to increase the number of high-quality schools under the Renaissance 2010 initiative, opening 100 new schools over a five-year period—most of them charter schools. Research findings on the Renaissance 2010 initiative were mixed but mostly showed little improvement in academic achievement.
Sicat, who previously served as the principal of UIC College Prep, a Noble Street Charter School, has already met his opponents. Last week at a community hearing on the plan for school closings, audience members shouted at Sicat, questioned his decision-making power, and demanded that the district invest in existing schools rather than close them and open up new ones.
“Everyone agrees that we’re trying to improve the educational options for our students, but I think how we get there is where we disagree,” Sicat said at a recent Chicago Board of Education meeting.
A group of community organizations were scheduled on Tuesday to release their own agenda for improving schools, calling on the district to invest in neighborhood schools by providing preschool and full-day kindergarten, supporting after-school programs, and taking better advantage of community partnerships. The groups had already presented their proposal to Beth Swanson, Emanuel’s deputy chief of staff for education, and Jamiko Rose, the district’s chief officer for family and community engagement.
Joanna Brown, the lead education organizer at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, said Swanson and Rose seemed receptive to their ideas, but added, “The question is where the priorities and the resources are.”
At the last two school board meetings, Sicat has given glimpses of the district’s strategy and priorities.
In October, he said school-closure decisions will be made primarily on academic performance. In November, the board approved a contract with an outside consulting firm to develop a “school choice matching system” that would require all prospective students to apply to the public schools. The district also sent parents a new school report card recently that labels their child’s school as a high or low performer. The city’s public charter schools were not given a report card, causing some to question why they are not being exposed to the same high-stakes evaluations as others.
Barbara Radner, director of the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University, said there is “no question” that the number of charter schools will increase under the new administration.
The Chicago Teachers Union is vehemently opposed to charter schools, and last week president Karen Lewis said the new guidelines for school closings unfairly favor “publicly-funded, but privately-managed charter schools” that are not held accountable to the same standards.
“The guidelines are more of the same failed policies and practices of previous CPS administrations: moving too quickly to close neighborhood schools and replace them with charter schools without ever demonstrating that CPS faithfully tried to adequately support struggling neighborhood schools,” Lewis said.
The CTU does not represent teachers at city charter schools.
Sicat and other district officials say the aim is to expand good schools, regardless of who runs them and whether they are charters or not.
Research on the impact of closing and opening schools on the basis of student achievement has been inconclusive.
A 2009 report from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research showed that student achievement dipped in the year leading up to closure, but was largely unaffected once a student was placed in a different school. Researchers found that only 6 percent of students moved into high-quality schools, while 42 percent continued to attend low-achieving ones.
The plan is to close those low-achieving schools as soon as possible. But opening “high-quality” schools in their place may take time, and even so, may still not produce the results Sicat and others are hoping for. Multiple Analyses of schools opened under Renaissance 2010 showed that most of them performed only slightly better or about the same as nearby neighborhood schools.
Still, “We want to make sure we’re giving our students better options now,” Sicat said.
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