Institute in the SJR: City Needs More School Choices – Now
Collin Hitt, the Institute's Director of Education Policy, has an op-ed on school vouchers featured in the State Journal-Register.
By Collin Hitt
This year, in a city where fewer than 5 percent of black men will graduate both high school and college, Chicago’s Urban Prep Academy has accomplished what was for some unfathomable. Opened only four years ago, the all-boys public school recently announced that 100 percent of its first senior class — which is almost entirely black — has now been accepted to four-year colleges and universities.
In Chicago, half of all black males drop out of high school. At the public schools surrounding Urban Prep, that abysmal figure is often higher, making the school’s success all the more poignant.
Last September, The State Journal-Register published a column in which I highlighted Urban Prep and schools like it, which carry incredible promise for towns throughout Illinois. Chicago isn’t the only district that struggles in graduating young black men from high school, let alone sending them to college. A blue ribbon task force in Springfield reported in 2008 that the black male dropout rate in Springfield actually might be comparable to that of Chicago.
A school similar to Urban Prep — one with a singular focus on solving the pervasive and persistent failure of urban schools to send male minority students to college — could have been opened in Springfield years ago, but wasn’t.
Urban Prep is a charter school — a public school that is attended by choice and must accept every boy who applies (presuming the school has room) and is given a great deal of flexibility from typical red tape. Urban Prep has used that flexibility to focus on single-gender education, create a longer school day, a longer school year, a strict discipline code and a culture of college preparedness. These may seem like common-sense notions, but they are rare within urban public schools.
Thankfully, the Springfield School District has now decided to move forward on a new school. While the school lacks some of the classic elements of a charter school, it has important similarities with Urban Prep. The school will be attended by choice, boys and girls will be separated into different classes, and students will sometimes attend school on Saturday and over the summer.
The new Capitol College Prep Academy is going to be located in east Springfield. Open to students throughout the district, the school will begin as a middle school and grow to include a high school where students will eventually take courses on campus at one of the city’s universities. Unlike charter schools, the new school will be able to screen incoming students based on their previous performance and behavior in the classroom.
The creation of the new school is a bold move for the district. Though currently facing financial challenges, district officials have tacitly acknowledged that families cannot wait for the return of economic high times before they are afforded better school choices. It’s a risky move too, since the success of the new school is far from guaranteed.
Urban Prep certainly wasn’t guaranteed success, but its administrators took full advantage of unique freedoms that they were given as a charter school. Springfield’s new school has similar goals. However, without having the same freedom as a charter school over personnel, scheduling and curricular decisions, it is unclear whether school staff will have the flexibility to achieve those goals — though one certainly hopes they can.
There is, however, a larger point. Regardless of the success of any single new school in Springfield, the community’s needs are, in fact, greater. According to the State Board of Education, two of the city’s three public high schools are ranked in the bottom 5 percent statewide. Springfield could still probably use another new high school — perhaps an all-boys school like Urban Prep.
Our town could also use a larger number of high-quality elementary schools, since nearly half of our low-income students fail to meet standards on state tests by the fifth grade. Without a dramatic increase in the performance of low-income and minority youngsters in Springfield elementary schools, those children will be far less likely to be accepted to or succeed in academically selective schools like the new Capitol College Prep or the popular Lincoln Magnet.
A no-nonsense charter elementary school located somewhere in east Springfield could conceivably increase the fortunes of low-income students so that they could, before their 13th birthdays, already be on track for college.
In Chicago, there’s no turning back. Now that Urban Prep has seen success, it seems inevitable that Chicago district officials will allow more schools like Urban Prep to open.
One can only imagine the scene in Springfield if the new Capitol College Prep enjoys similar success. Our town has never had a public school that sent every graduating senior on to college, but that could become a reality. If it does, we’ll be asking ourselves, “Why didn’t we do more of this sooner?”
Springfield families need many more school choices, like charter schools and magnet schools and trade schools, at every grade level. And they need them sooner than later.
Collin Hitt is director of education policy at the Illinois Policy Institute. He can be reached atcollin@illinoispolicy.org.