CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

'Chicago Public Schools', commonly abbreviated as 'CPS' by local residents and politicians, is a school district that controls over 600 public elementary and high schools in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago Public Schools is currently the third largest school district in the United States, with more than 400,000 students enrolled in the school district. It is led by CEO Arne Duncan. The position of CEO of the CPS was created by Mayor Richard Daley after he successfully convinced the Illinois State Legislature to place CPS under the mayor's control.

Contents

Schools

Budget

Employees

2005 Teacher layoffs

Magnet Schools Receive Preferential Treatment

Performance

See also

External links

News and Commentary

Schools

CPS is a vast system of primary and secondary schools confined to Chicago's city limits. This system is the is the second largest employer in Chicago.^[1] Some schools are new construction, some appear gothic in architecture, and others are deteriorating from years of lack of attention.
Most schools in the district, being K-8, elementary, middle, or secondary, have attendance boundaries, restricting student enrollment outside of any given residential area.
Attendance boundaries vary in shape and size, depending on how many schools are located within a neighborhood.
For example, Beverly has at least four public K-8 schools: Barnard, Clissold, Vanderpoel, and Sutherland. Each school restricts enrollment based on their individual attendance boundaries. A school may elect to enroll students outside their attendance boundaries if there is space, and or if it has a magnet cluster program. Full magnet schools, such as Gunsaulus Scholastic Academy, are open to student enrollment citywide, provided that applicants meet a level of high academic standards: living near a magnet school does not guarantee admission.

Budget

The annual budget for the CPS is in excess of $5 billion USD [1].

Employees

CPS offers incentives to maintain a competitive workforce. The district actively recruits teachers from around the world, with the Global Educator Outreach program bringing talent to Chicago to teach in the areas of math, science, and foreign language. [2] In 2005, the Chicago Department of Housing began offering mortgage assistance to CPS teachers buying homes and condominiums in redeveloped mixed-income CHA complexes. Teachers can receive up to $3,000 in mortgage subsidies anywhere in the city or $7,500 in mortgage subsidies for purchases at the mixed income communities.
'Recruitment'
CPS also offers an exciting "hand-on" summer internship program for aspiring teachers who are currently enrolled in an undergraduate education program. This is known as the Summer Fellows Program. Program members will live in Chicago for six weeks during the summer school term and work as teacher assistants. Roles in the classroom vary from simply observing their mentor teacher to actually being responsible for designing and teaching an entire unit. Summer fellows report high satisfaction with their experience, and it has been a great way to acquaint future teachers with CPS who otherwise never would have stepped foot inside its system.

2005 Teacher layoffs

School administrators issued advanced dismissal notices to approximately 1,116 untenured teachers between March and April 2005. A change in the 2003-2007 Agreement Between the Board of Education and Chicago Teachers Union allowed for a clause giving principals the power to dismiss untenured teachers without due process. Principals can login to a website, select a reason from six items listed on a drop-down menu, and click a submit button. At least fifty-percent of the dismissed teachers experienced difficulty controlling their classrooms. Other reasons for dismissal include poor communication skills and rapport with fellow teachers and parents. The fact that principals can simply choose "other" from the drop-down menu is a cause for controversy. This practice is questionable because it conceals reasons for dismissal that are not permissible under the contract, such as budget cuts.
Other would mean reassons such as insubordination.

Magnet Schools Receive Preferential Treatment

CPS gives preferential treatment to its elite magnet schools. This was documented in a Chicago Sun-Times column on June 8, 2006. Approximately fifty students from Best Practice High School—one of CPS’s poorest performing inner-city schools (only 7.9% of the students passed Illinois’ achievement examination)—planned a demonstration against the genocide in Darfur. The protest was to take place outside the Kluczynski Federal Office Building in downtown Chicago, which houses the offices of both senators from Illinois. The students received permission from the school’s principal and spent weeks planning for the demonstration. Less than a week before the demonstration, a CPS administrator overrode the school’s principal and withdrew permission for the rally.
Dan Rabinovitz, the students’ teacher, advocated on behalf of his students; he pleaded with CPS to reconsider, citing CPS magnets schools that were given permission to demonstrate. Rabinovitz failed to obtain permission for the rally, but later succeeded in selling the story to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown. On June 8, 2006, Brown detailed CPS’s unequal treatment in the lead column of the Chicago Sun-Times.
'Students' Darfur Protest Finally Gets Heard (Page 2)'
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20060608/ai_n16484142

Performance

The April 21, 2006 issue of the Chicago Tribune revealed a study released by the Consortium on Chicago School Research that stated that 6 of every 100 CPS freshmen would earn a bachelor's degree by age 25. 3 in 100 black or Latino men would earn a bachelor's degree by age 25. The study tracked Chicago high school students who graduated in 1998 and 1999. 35% of CPS students who went to college earned their bachelor's degree within six years, below the national average of 64%.[3]
As announced on September 8, 2006, due to an ongoing series of campaigns and programs, including one which emphasized the importance of Fathers accompanying their children to the First Day of School, and parents picking up their children's report cards, First Day attendance rose from a previous year high of 92% in 2005 to 92.8% for the first day of classes, Tuesday, September 5, 2006.

★ CPS press release

★ CBS report

★ ''Chicago Sun-Times''

★ NBC 5

See also

★ List of Chicago Public Schools

★ Chicago Public High School League

★ Local School Councils

★ Renaissance 2010

★ Middle School Cadet Corps

External links

★ Chicago Public Schools website

News and Commentary

★ ''1,116 City Teachers Flunk Out'' Article on FY 2005 teacher layoffs

★ CPS Blog

★ "CPS career program sends fashion students out of classroom and into business" Article on recent CPS vocational programs