Changes to CPS selective enrollment admissions

 This is for those of you who are parents who probably want their child to enroll in a selective enrollment school. Some changes are coming, I won't say much because I have no children so really I have no dog in this. Perhaps someone out there has their own thoughts.

WBEZ:

Chicago Public Schools is poised to make a significant change to the admissions process for its coveted test-in elementary and high schools in an attempt to award more seats to low-income students.

In one of his first major moves as CEO, Pedro Martinez is proposing that the school district drop part of the current system that awards 30% of the seats at these schools — including for the nearly 16,000 students at 11 selective enrollment high schools — strictly based on a student’s seventh grade marks and test scores. This would almost certainly open up more seats to a more diverse student population and make it more difficult for students from the city’s upper-income neighborhoods to get in.

It is a move some have long advocated for, especially as the student population in some of the most coveted schools, including some of the top schools in the state, have become more affluent, white and Asian.

Most of the seats at these selective schools — 70% — are divided among four groups of students based on the socioeconomic characteristics of where they live. Students earn a score out of 900 based on their grades and test scores and then compete for seats against students in their same socioeconomic group.

Here's more:

Officials say they want to make the process more equitable. They are proposing either getting rid of the rank order set aside or reserving more spots for students for lower-income communities.

This would be the most significant change to the admission process since 2009, when CPS was forced by the courts to drop race as one factor in admission. Instead, it began weighing a student’s socioeconomic status, in large part as a proxy for race.

This new change would make the admissions process more fair, rather than having it tip in favor of students from middle- to upper middle class communities, said Lauren Sartain, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an an affiliated researcher at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.