[Kon-Peki]

I think that a lot of people would prefer that to happen. Chicago Public Schools is constantly finding kids from wealthy suburbs whose parents rent cheap apartments in not-so-desirable parts of the city, don’t live in them, and use that address to have their kids tested to get into the high schools, taking up spots that would otherwise go to city residents. Yes, everyone would rather those kids just go to private school in their rich suburb.

The standard way to get into these high schools, by the way, starts at age 5, when you take your kid down to IIT and graduate psychology students administer a pseudo-IQ test. Based on that score and your ranked choice of regional gifted center elementary school, your kid may or may not be in the pipeline. It is pretty insane, actually.

[clipsy]

> The standard way to get into these high schools, by the way, starts at age 5, when you take your kid down to IIT and graduate psychology students administer a pseudo-IQ test.

In my experience it starts a year or two before that when you spend 5 figures per year on a private preschool that will prepare them for the pseudo-IQ test. (Better that than paying for private K-12!)

[pavluha]

Do you think that Chicago mayor's plan would help with that?

[Kon-Peki]

He claims that his plan isn’t to get rid of those high schools, it’s to focus instead on the neighborhood schools.

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt (why not? I don’t live in Chicago anymore).

In addition to these high schools and the regional gifted center K-8 schools, Chicago also has classical schools (test in), charter schools, and magnet and lottery schools. It’s the latter that I think they are trying to limit or get rid of.

Basically, any public school in Chicago that is not running at capacity can open up spots that any student from anywhere in the city can take. Those are lottery schools. So in the spring, any parent that cares can fill out a ranked choice form on the website. Over the course of the summer, they run a lottery. Kids get offers and also their place on the waitlist for each choice they made. You get a couple days to accept or decline any offer you get, and then they make new offers and adjust everyone else’s place on the waitlist, as do this as many times as it takes for all spots to be accepted.

So… the “good” neighborhood schools are running at capacity with a highly diverse set of kids driven to do well, from all over the city. The “bad” neighborhood schools are running 2/3 empty with mostly only kids with bad luck or whose parents don’t care. I agree that this is a problem, and I’d like to see if their proposal has any hope of improving the situation. But as far as I can tell they haven’t figured out the details of anything yet, have they?