Why Can't Chicago Shape Up its Public Schools? (Washington: rental, home)

[Craziaskowboi]

All the money in the world thrown at the problem won't do a damn bit of good as long as a critical mass of students and parents don't give a **** about education.

[chicago103]

Originally Posted by hxcobd

The only thing? Ever heard anything about Chicago taxes?

What exactly are people referring to when talking about high Chicago taxes besides the sales tax and restaurant tax? I mean the federal income tax is the same everywhere, the Illinois state income tax is one of the lowest in the mid-west or anywhere and even if Quinn raises it it still will be competitive with other midwestern states. The property taxes in the city of Chicago are much lower than in the suburbs. Chicago's taxes are insanely low compared to NYC where the state income tax is higher and there is a CITY INCOME TAX on top of that. I just don't see why an average person moving to Chicago for an average job would be turned off by our taxes.

So what is it? Is it business taxes? Taxes on some kind of fancy investments or some regulations the city has? I am not a wealthy person so maybe I am unaware of these things.

Also as far as the public schools go they have come a long way for the better in the past 20 years but they still have a long way to go.

[Chicago60614]

Originally Posted by Sodium

What would improve Chicago schools?

1) Paying more to the best teachers, to attract and keep them in the profession
2) Fire bad teachers. Empower principals to fire bad teachers.
3) Get the city, state and federal bureaucrats completely out of the process
4) Eliminate district curriculum departments that force lunatic ivory tower disasters on the kids. Get rid of Whole Language reading instruction, constructivist math, gee-whiz science, stark'n'dark literature, and history as a series of oppressions, and return to actually teaching.
5) Let parents decide which school is best for each of their own children. Competition promotes a quest for improvement.
6) Provide either a voucher or tax-credit to ALL families with children, which then can be used to enroll their children at ANY school, so that not only the financially well-off can have good schools for their kids.

Now, to answer the posted question, "Why Can't Chicago Shape Up Its Public Schools?"
Because Chicago isn't doing ***ANY*** of those things.

This is a perfect example of an outside point of view. Someone from the suburbs, or where people actually cared about education (a normal place).

My roommate was very well educated and completely devoted to her job. She taught 5 years at an elementary school on the city's west side. Her school was brand new, and completely stacked with everything you could ask for. Unfortunately they couldn't even use half the stuff. Couldn't use the library full of books because the students would literally sit there and rip the books to shreds. Couldn't use the playground because it was being destroyed within a week of opening. Couldn't hang things on bulletin boards because it would be ripped off and on the ground within a few hours.

She was horrified her first year, and just got use to it after that. She lasted the entire 5 years without a single parent ever showing up to a parent-teacher night. She would have maybe 3-4 of the mothers show up for conferences. The kids almost all came from broken homes where the absolute last place time was spent was worrying about education. It was a free service to get the kids out of the houses - that was it for 75% of them. There were always, of course, the few students in the class who really wanted to learn and were smart. Unfortunately they just always got lost in the shuffle. My roommate called herself a warden every day. She was there to walk the tightrope of trying to keep the class from blowing up into fistfights and or screaming/chaos. She tried to "teach", but it was always lost on the students.

It's where the kids come from and the value system. You can make a school and teachers as nice as you want - but when you have a community where 80% of the people think education is a complete joke and waste of time, good luck.

The thing that upset her the most was that when parents were called or kids sent home (every day), most of the parents would get really pissed off at my roommate. They would talk to her like she was stupid - always saying "why are you telling me these things????? You're the teacher". As if it was 100% the teachers responsibility to take care of all aspects of these children during the day. A kid beat the crap out of another kid? Why in the hell are you going to the parent with this issue - it's the school's issue. They weren't responsible for the kids from 7am to 2pm - and after that the kids ran the streets.

I'm not saying it's all like that, many areas of the city are very devoted, many are middle of the road, and many (like my roommates) are at the very bottom of the barrel.

After 5 years she was fired because she was going to get tenure and the school admins hated that. They offered to hire her back as a 1st year teacher the day after she was let go - but luckly she laughed and said no thanks. She moved to a district well outside the city, and on her first day there she came home bawling. It didn't hit her how hopeless and awful her last school was until she opened her eyes to a "normal" school.

[oakparkdude]

Originally Posted by chicago103

What exactly are people referring to when talking about high Chicago taxes besides the sales tax and restaurant tax? I mean the federal income tax is the same everywhere, the Illinois state income tax is one of the lowest in the mid-west or anywhere and even if Quinn raises it it still will be competitive with other midwestern states. The property taxes in the city of Chicago are much lower than in the suburbs. Chicago's taxes are insanely low compared to NYC where the state income tax is higher and there is a CITY INCOME TAX on top of that. I just don't see why an average person moving to Chicago for an average job would be turned off by our taxes.

So what is it? Is it business taxes? Taxes on some kind of fancy investments or some regulations the city has? I am not a wealthy person so maybe I am unaware of these things.

Also as far as the public schools go they have come a long way for the better in the past 20 years but they still have a long way to go.

Yeah, other than the sales tax, taxes on individuals in Chicago are pretty low. Property taxes are considerably lower than surrounding suburbs. Now you could argue that at least in the burbs you get decent schools in return for high property taxes, but if you're childless, that argument doesn't really apply. As to income taxes, at Chicago (and by Chicago I mean Illinois) income taxes are significantly lower than comparable cities and are an especially good deal for high income individuals.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by chicago103

What exactly are people referring to when talking about high Chicago taxes besides the sales tax and restaurant tax?
...

I've come to the conclusion that when people complain that the overall tax burden in Chicago is high, what they're really saying is this:

"I am unable to think for myself, so I accept as fact things I hear from political celebrities who make me feel that my powerlessness isn't just a fact of life [the fact being that most people can't be powerful], but the result of a deliberate scheme by the Others."

[j_cat]

However you may feel about gentrification, it's the only clear way for big city schools to improve.

New York is pretty much the only big city that has started to get its schools out of the rut (except for a few very stable cities like San Diego that never had much problem to begin with), and that's because it is gentrified on a level far beyond most American cities.

It's all about critical mass, as an earlier poster suggested, and most cities just don't have it yet. Chicago is hardly alone.

[Chicagoland60426]

Originally Posted by Attrill

This will obviously be a hard problem to fix. I think that making it easier to get rid of bad teachers is a step in the right direction, but you also have to look at who makes the decision that someone is a bad teacher and how teachers are evaluated.

Ideally a school administration will fire teachers who are just phoning it in, but in reality you will have some good teachers fired. Teachers who refuse to give a crappy student an A after the parents ***** like crazy to the Principal, teachers who think they should teach more than just standards tests, and teachers who don't follow whatever that year's miracle curriculum is will be fired along with the slackers. Evaluating the quality of a teacher is a hard thing to do.

To some degree the failure of education in the US is due to tenure, but I think that the obsession with standardized tests is much more to blame. I've always kicked ass on standardized tests, but my sister sucked at them. She went on to get a PHD and is a published author, I'm certainly doing fine for myself, but she is definitely a smarter person than I am academically. I have major problems with the reliance we currently have on standardized tests.

I'm probably as bad as a test taker as your sister, but I did well on the constitution. I think that has to do with history/social studies being my strong point.

I think there is too much of an emphasis on subjects that most people don't use in real life like some math subjects(Trig and Calcalus). Most students at CPS will forget how to solve an equation using letters by next semester, unless the school is year round. I always felt you can get by in life with basic math skills(with some Algebra and statistics thrown in). And its time for schools to start preparing the students for their career goal, especially for those students that are not planning on getting a higher education. Maybe by doing this, it will reduce the drop out rate.

[ckzona]

Originally Posted by Gnutella

All the money in the world thrown at the problem won't do a damn bit of good as long as a critical mass of students and parents don't give a **** about education.

Perfectly said. A lot of the parents and students going into school already have that "i don't give a Fu**" attitude. They don't even give it a chance to really try it out and work hard.

[Bideshi]

Originally Posted by Dncr

The title pretty much states it all, but why can't Chicago shape up its public schools? They're the only thing really standing in the way of the city taking off for good.

The same thing that's wrong with all public schools: the teachers union that protects bad teachers.

[jasper12]

You can take the kids out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the kids. Go figure the reasons that Chicago schools are failing. All the money in the world cannot change the attitude of the society those kids live and experience on a daily basis. They don't see a way out. If Obama had grown up in innner city Chicago, instead of the upscale Hawaiian school he went to, we would see a much different person.