The Chronic State Of Public Education In Chicago, Part 1
By Robert Klein Engler (08/14/03)
Part 2--"The Continued Failure of the Public Schools"
Chicago is often referred to by businessmen as the city that works. Yet, when it comes to public education in Chicago, this is hardly the case. After more than fifty years of Democratic Party control of the public schools in Chicago, the city's schools are still failing. In 1988, then-Secretary of Education William Bennett came to Chicago and declared its schools to be ''the worst in the nation.'' Not much has changed since then, even after Mayor Daley the Younger took over the schools in 1995.
A recent report in the Chicago Tribune newspaper (August, 2003), documents the fact that 86% of the failing school in the state of Illinois are in Chicago. Such a dismal report begs many questions. What is the reason for these many years of failure? Why is it that Chicagoans put up with such a long train of misguided programs and policies and do not demand improvement of their public schools? Finally, is there any solution to this persistent problem that threatens the city's social fabric?
To better understand the continuing failure of Chicago's public schools, we must first understand that public education in Chicago has as its primary mission, not education but Democratic Party politics. Put another way, the continuation of the Democratic Party's status quo in Chicago is the reason for the Board of Education. Partisan politics is the vested interest that keeps the schools in a continuing state of decay. Although the public schools have failed, Democratic ethnic politics has not. Once we understand that the mission of the Board of Education is not education, but instead to guarantee votes, jobs, and patronage that perpetuates segregation, then the reason Chicago's public schools continue to fail is clear.
Democratic Party politicians doom education in the city from the start. Although public education may be in ruins, the political mission of the public schools is carried out very well. In the language of sociological functionalism, what used to be the latent function of public education, has now become the manifest function. It makes little difference if the educational system actually educates. Just as long as it gets out the vote and placates the urban minorities, it will be kept up and running by the Democratic Party that controls the city.
When we compare the public schools of Chicago to those schools run by the Archdiocese of the city, the political function of public education in Chicago could not be more evident. Besides having lower administrative cost per student, Catholic schools actually educate students. Chicago Catholic Schools graduate 98% of their students as compared to 68% of Chicago public schools students. On standardized tests Chicago Catholic schools students score substantially higher than their public school counterparts. Furthermore, the cost per student is substantially lower at Catholic schools. The total, yearly expenditures divided by the total students brings a cost of about $10,500 per student in Chicago public schools, as opposed to $7,800 per student for Chicago Catholic secondary schools.
About 85% of the students in Chicago public schools are considered "low income" as compared to 37% statewide. In spite of this, African-American and Hispanic students attending urban Catholic schools are more than twice as likely to graduate from college as their counterparts in public schools. About 27 percent of African American and Hispanic Catholic school graduates who started college went on to graduate, compared with 11 percent from urban public schools (Skandera and Sousa, "Catholic Schools Achieve High Marks at Low Costs," Focus on the Family).
Paul Vallas, the past CEO of Chicago's public schools credits the Catholic schools more standardized, traditional curriculum for the reported higher student achievement. Compared with the Catholic schools, Vallas said, ''Our curriculum is too diverse and too diffuse. You can literally cherry-pick your way through the easiest courses'' (Catalyst, March, 1997). These obvious differences can be explained by noting that Catholic school values are religious values, not political ones. The Catholic schools, with less money and resources do a better job of educating because they are not engaged in political action nor do they have party politics as their motive for existence. Parochial schools point out to Chicagoans that the solution to the continuing public school crisis is a political solution first and foremost. Ironically, it is a solution that no one holding political office in the city wants to admit.
The political solution to the problems facing the Chicago public schools is what it has always been--racial and ethnic integration. That was the conclusion John Hopkins University sociologist James S. Coleman reached in the 1966 report Equality of Educational Opportunity--a conclusion reached half a century ago and still valid today. Those who remember the uproar over court ordered busing that this report encouraged also know that racial integration could never be accomplished by busing again. Nevertheless, after the failure of busing to achieve its objective, we are still left with this lump of truth stuck in our throats: Disadvantaged black children learn better in well-integrated classrooms (Barbara J. Kiviat, ''The Social Side of Schooling,'' John Hopkins Magazine).
Combined with the influence of a disadvantaged home environment, black children do poorly in school because their schools are segregated. To fix education in the Chicago public schools, we must integrate the schools and the ranks of teachers who work in those schools. This is the truth no Democratic politician wants to admit, because public school integration would mean an end to urban politics as we know it.
A closer look at the reality of urban life in America shows that although our cities have become more diverse, they are just as segregated as they were 50 years ago. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor for March, 2001, and using data from the 2000 census, Laurent Belsie claims that ''The United States is becoming steadily more ethnically diverse. But it's also as segregated as ever.'' ''We're not more integrated--that's the bottom line,'' says John Logan, director of the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at Albany, New York.
These data suggest that after four decades of efforts, programs to integrate communities have failed. Needless to say, these efforts were not spearheaded by urban Democratic Parties. In fact, cities like New York and Chicago show that integration patterns don't appear to have changed for whites and blacks since the 1920s. ''You might have thought the black civil-rights movement or the rise of the black middle class or changing racial attitudes surely by now would have made a difference,'' says Professor Logan. But ''the color line is still very strong.''
In spite of these facts, new efforts at integration will not happen because it is not in the political interest of the Democrats in Chicago to bring it about. Integration will not happen because there is a schizophrenic element to party politics. Although Democratic Party politicians preach civil-rights on the national level, the party must rely on continued segregation at the local level to stay in office and power. The opportune time may have passed also for successful integration policies to be implemented. Furthermore, integration will not happen because powerful groups in Chicago do not want it to happen. Among these groups besides the party loyalists are the teacher's union, committed to affirmative action employment, and segments of both the white and black communities.
Democratic Party politicians do not want integration because integration dilutes block voting by minorities. Some wards must remain predominantly black for black politicians to be continually elected. Outmoded and crime infested housing projects will never be torn down in those neighborhoods and their residents integrated, because it is not in the political interest of aldermen from those wards to do this. Where else can they find so many votes in one place? Any effective social policy requiring integration will never be put into effect because such policies will be the end of many political careers. Integration means that candidates may have to run on their records and not on their race. Minorities must remain on the political plantation if elections are to be won. The price of this power is the continuing failure of public education.
Teachers unions are interested in job security and not in educational standards. In Chicago, as in many urban areas, teacher's unions are locked into a dance with school boards that end with both sleeping in the same bed after the dance is over. The next morning they join hands and become part of the same political machine that grinds out votes at the expense of educating the young. Echoing a sentiment from Chicago's Mayor Daley the Elder when he said, ''The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder,'' we may argue that the politicians and teacher's unions are here not to solve the problems of Chicago's public schools, but to preserve those problems. Given a choice between educational excellence or job security for their least competent member, teacher’s union will decide for the least competent. Both men and institutions act according their nature.
Teacher's unions in Chicago have the potential to be a countervailing voice to the evils of segregation. Instead, they mirror the myopic, Democratic politics of the city. Trapped in last century's ideology of moribund liberalism and affirmative action, unions simply extort more and more money from the state and submit to the racial and ethnic segregation they see around them. In some cases, as in New York City, the unions even promote further segregation by supporting an all gay high school.
With their worn out ideas, neither teacher's union leaders nor the rank and file can be relied upon to change the direction of public education. In the case of Chicago's Cook County College Teacher's Union, the same man has been president for more than 35 years. During his tenure, the number of full time faculty at the City Colleges has diminished by 60 percent. His ultimate success emerges as an ironic one. Whereas in Chicago there has been a long tradition of dead men voting, the current CCCTU president has managed to persuade people to vote for a dead man.
Segments of both the white and black communities also resist integration. many whites have proven this over the past 50 years by voting with their feet. This is why busing did not work, and why the suburbs grew along with help from government incentives like federal money for the construction of expressways. All these factors fueled a white flight from the inner city to suburban bedroom communities. Those who left the inner city claim they do not want to live next to the many dysfunctional elements of inner city, ghetto culture. The irony here is that the only way these dysfunctional cultural elements are to be broken down and dissolved is by integration and assimilation. Because of a desire to hold on to dysfunctional cultural traits, blacks, too, have resisted integration.
One of the motives for this resistance has been the promotion by middle class blacks of Afrocentrism in its many forms. Many middle class blacks who make a living off of a campaign for civil-rights have a vested interest in keeping other blacks as America's official, suffering minority. Furthermore, most of the leaders of the civil-rights movement have a vested interest in continuing segregation, as well. Many of these leaders would be out of a high paying job if we in fact did solve the racial problems in this country, let alone in Chicago. Sadly, as the numbers of other minorities grow in American society, attention will shift from blacks to Asian and Latino urban problems. This is already happening as many schools in Chicago are becoming increasingly Latino.
Furthermore, studies show that although most white families do not mind if a black family moves into their neighborhood or even next door, once a neighborhood tips beyond about 15 percent minority, the middle class white population flees. Panic selling, real estate speculation and changes in the labor market have contributed further to the exodus of the white middle class from the inner city. This has created a downward spiral in many urban school districts that has proven impossible to overcome. This is no more evident than in the Chicago community of Englewood.
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