z42\doc\web\2000\07\chicgift.txt


In a message dated 6/8/00 4:42:28 PM, dmeier@ESSENTIALSCHOOLS.ORG writes:


<< NYC, a few years back,  posted two remarkably high scores in schools with
largely free-lunch populations--proof again, the reporter noted, that good
leadership can perform miracles.  Upon investigation (by me) it turned out
that both miracles were the result of the schools changing its student
population; becoming schools for the gifted.  Which meant that the kids
whose scores we were now supposed to be impressed with were those accepted
on the basis of their high test scores. >>


June 11, 2000


Deb, Gerry, Arthur and all,


Shifting student populations and then taking credit for the "gains" are an
urban trick of long standing. The New York Times fell for the trick two weeks
ago, when it reported that Chicago's "Northside College Preparatory High
School" (newly created at a cost of $44 million -- officially admitted --
this year) was "Chicago's best." They missed the fact (as I'm reporting in
Substance) that Northside is also Chicago's whitest and that Northside didn't
take any kids into their first classes who scored below the 8th and 9th
stanines (roughly, above the 80th percentiles) in reading and math. So it was
impossible for the school to "fail" by our "standard" measures here. That
school has now been hyped on Page One of The Chicago Tribune ("City's new
school at head of the class", May 22, 2000) and Page A12 of the National
Edition of The New York Times ("Chicago Schools' Answer to Tug of the
Suburbs", June 2, 2000).


I hope this will make some of you who believe in the magic of surfing the
major newspapers that it may limit your vision, but we'll take these things
slowly.


The point today is that you can also "improve" your school considerably by
shifting a part of the population, while also keeping part of the whole.
That's even more difficult to detect using the data alone from outside the
system itself.


Here are the scores for two Chicago elementary schools on the ITBS going back
six years. These are all based on Chicago's method of reporting, i.e.,
"Percentage of Third through Eighth Grade Students at or Above National
Norms" --


Luther Burbank Elementary (2035 N. Mobile, Chicago, IL 60639) (reading):
1995: 53.9 percent
1996: 51.0 percent
1997: 24.7 percent
1998: 26.1 percent
1999: 31.0 percent
2000: 27.6 percent


Jean Baptiste Beaubien Elementary (5025 N. Laramie, Chicago 60630) (reading):
1995: 39.6 percent
1996: 43.0 percent
1997: 68.8 percent
1998: 73.7 percent
1999: 73.3 percent
2000: 77.0 percent


What happened between May 1996 and May 1997?


In September 1996, the Chicago Board of Education moved the "regional gifted
program" of nine full classrooms of children (k - 8) from Burbank to
Beaubien. The kids had been tested into the gifted program using IQ tests in
pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and kept together since then. Burbank
became overcrowded, so the pressure was on to move those nine classrooms full
of kids to somewhere else.


Chicago has eight "regional gifted centers" (two for each quadrant of the
city) in addition to our panoply of "magnet" schools and programs. The
difference between the "magnet" schools and programs and the "gifted" program
is that in order to get into the "gifted" centers you have to "pass" an IQ
test when you are very small (as I noted, in pre-kindergarten or
kindergarten). Clout usually doesn't help. (The cut score is generally
upwards of the 95th percentile on what the kids later refer to as "The Smart
Test," which is changed from one year to the next so that coaching doesn't
help much.)


Some of the "Regional Gifted Centers" are in their own buildings (which gives
Chicago its "top" elementary schools each year and often leads to media
reports about how Chicago has the "top" schools in Illinois, with nobody
reading the fine print). A couple of them are inside other schools, but very
distinct. One of those is the (former) Burbank Regional Gifted Center which
(since September 1996) became the Beaubien Regional Gifted Center.


With Burbank in turmoil because of overcrowding in the early 1990s, the
principal of Beaubien saw an opportunity to "raise" his school's scores and
took in the old Burbank program with the support of the community -- even
though it meant adding approximately 300 kids to a school that was already
overcrowded (albeit less so than Burbank).


Not one of those kids has ever scored below "the national norm" in reading or
math in their lives.


One year later, Chicago's school board added a second building to the
Beaubien campus (thereby eliminating most of the school playground) to hold
the larger population. If you go to Beaubien on a school day you will see the
children arriving and playing on all sides of the building, including on the
front lawns. The logistics of running an elementary school with such numbers
(this past school year Beaubien had 913 kids in grade K-8) are quite
fascinating, especially when you add the fact that the children speak five or
six different languages (imagine recess and playground supervision).


Burbank, by the way, continues to become more overcrowded, and last school
year had 1,146 children K-8. Most of the kids are Burbank are "Hispanic" now.
One of the things about the shift of kids was that the school's racial and
ethnic diversity were also destroyed.


After his 1997 miracle, the principal of Beaubien actually accepted honors
from local community groups when his school's scores went "up" in 1997. Never
once did he explain what the trick was. The "Beaubien Miracle" didn't become
part of Chicago's contributions to "No Excuses" because it was too blatant,
even for the types of people who promote such nonsense. At least the people
at Burbank weren't subjected to some mindless "Why did you do so badly?"
media attack, which sometimes happens.


George Schmidt