What is our Agenda for elections

Education

Pay bonuses for effective teachers & fire the ineffective ones

Ten years ago, Washington D.C. enacted significant education reform measures that sought to pay bonuses to the most effective teachers in the system and make it easier for administrators to fire the worst-performing teachers. These reforms have performed exceptionally well; Teacher retention rates improved, specifically higher among the best-rated teachers, student test scores rose, public school attendance increased, the applicant pool got more diverse, and newer hires were higher rated than the average teacher in the system.

Under this new system, the results show that only 1% of the teachers were found to be genuinely ineffective, and 96% of those ineffective teachers were fired. Scholars studying this program found when those ineffective teachers left the system, student achievement rose by 0.14 standard deviations in reading and 0.21 standard deviations in math. Link Holding our teachers to higher standards should not be controversial; as President Obama once stated, “If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances to improve but still does not improve, there’s no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.”

Chicago should follow reforms that work and implement a program like Washington D. C’s that will make more people want to become CPS teachers, keep our most effective teachers in the CPS system and push the small minority of bad teachers out of the system. Teaching is one of the most critical jobs in our city, and we need to ensure that we are attracting the best talent, retaining the best teachers, and not forcing our students to be trapped in classrooms led by ineffective teachers.

Expand Public Selective Enrollment High Schools

According to the US News, five of the best ten high schools in Illinois are in Chicago. All of which are public, selective enrollment magnet schools. We need to expand upon these schools so that more Chicagoans can benefit from these high-performing institutions. Whitney Young, which ranks #4 in the state rankings, recently had 16,000 students apply and only had the opportunity to enroll 400 students. The demand for this type of education is there, and Chicago owes it to its young students to find a way to match the supply.

Close the worst public charter schools and expand the effective ones

Public charter schools are given more flexibility in their operation, and thus we should expect superior results. We must ensure rigorous authorizers do not allow public charter schools to underperform their non-charter counterparts. But while we must close ineffective charter schools, we must expand upon our best-performing public charter schools. Researchers have found that urban charter schools produce higher scores on state-level exams, higher college admission test scores, and both higher enrollment and scores in advance placement courses. We must do everything in our power to ensure that our Chicago youth have the ability to attend these high-performing schools and better their opportunity to succeed in their future.

When Cory Booker was the mayor of Newark between 2006-2013, one of his goals was to make Newark the “charter-school capital of the nation.” Newark students who had previously ranked in the 38 percentiles in statewide tests had improved by 40 points and exceeded the state average in math and language testing. On top of that, studies of Newark, like many other studies, have shown that the expansion of charter schools has not come at the detriment of traditional public schools. As can be expected, higher levels of competition in the education sector helped charter and non-charter students alike. Similar results can be seen in New Orleans, who after the tragedy of Katrina, transitioned to a full charter model for schooling and saw significant gains across the spectrum.

Air Conditioners and Air Filters

Sometimes we can find education improvements in unlikely areas, some of which would include improving our school’s air conditioning and filtering systems. Studies have shown that hotter temperatures have adverse effects on student performance. A 2019 study found, “Without air-conditioning, a 1°F hotter school year reduces that year’s learning by one percent”. Link In addition to temperature, researchers have found that air quality also harms student learning. An interesting example of such is that randomized research from chess tournaments should that wrong chess moves increase as air quality decreases. Link This mirrors many studies showing that the population in classrooms can significantly lower student test scores.

We should always be looking for ways to better our schools and should work to implement low-hanging fruit like better air conditioners and air filters across our school system.

Summertime vocational training (competitively source and pay for performance)

Everyone involved in education policy knows about the fundamental problem of summer learning loss. The three months away from the classroom has a disproportionally negative effect on the economically less fortunate. In addition to summer jobs programs that we must continue developing and investing in, we should expand summertime vocational training programs. Vocational training programs are essential to ensuring that our kids have a bright future. In our globalized world with artificial intelligence threatening job prospects, we must be sure to instill skills that cannot be outsourced or automated away. Welding, plumbing, and other similarly suited careers continue to allow people to rise into the middle class without the burden of collegiate student loans.

Teach phonics in our schools

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 23% of adults lack literacy skills. Link: In a world where literacy skills are increasingly critical to lifetime success, we need to ensure that Chicago schools utilize the most effective teaching practices. In a 2019 survey, it was found that 72% of schools use a balanced literacy approach, which is a combination of teaching whole language and phonetic learning. Study after study shows that phonics is far superior in teaching students how to read. We need to follow the data here and focus our school’s reading curriculum around phonics instead of whole language learning.

Provide subsidies for after school online programming like Synthesis or other online tutoring

We all know that a significant chunk of learning occurs outside the classroom and outside of typical school hours. Those families with disposable income can invest in further educational opportunities not available to all Chicagoans, and this education gap shows up in test scores. We must create a program for families struggling with their finances to invest in their child’s afterschool education.