This is interesting, more than half of the students at a South Side school in Chicago aren’t even passing the eighth grade.  Should we be surprised, or is this evidence of deeper problems of the Chicago public school system that we are just now learning about?  A week ago we heard that 1,000 jobs were being cut at Chicago Public Schools.  I had figured that at the very least, Chicago Public Schools was at least better than Detroit Public Schools, but this article suggests otherwise.  I would have enjoyed going to a public school that looks like this though. 

The system is the second largest employer in Chicago.  It also has a history of high dropout rates.  Apparantly only 35% of students who attended schools ran by Chicago Public Schools in 1998 or 1999 graduated from college within 6 years.  What is startling about South Side though is that we’re not talking about high school; in public schools all across the country there are high rates of students not graduating from high school, but eigth grade.  At one point in this country many schools simply “pass through” students that could not graduate, which was not a good policy either, then in the nineties many school districts across the country instituted policies that would test kids before allowing them to graduate.  Today everyone is tested you can’t even get out of kindergarden without meeting some basic requirements, and a lot of children just are not passing these tests.

Children that cannot get it right are pushed out of the system before they can reach their mid twenties, at which point they are then expected to get a GED.  However I am not sure if this can totally be laid at the feet of Bradwell Elementary though.  Are the parents involved in their children’s education, and if their children are failing seventh grade is this something completely different or have they also failed sixth grade and fifth grade as well?  The reason I am asking this is that one must wonder if there is not a disconnect between the involvement of the parents into the children’s education or if this high failure rate is not evidence of an even larger issue at the school.  What are the teachers like; a lot of public schools tend to have a sterile, factory like feeling as though if you do not want to make it no one is going to push you or encourage you to get ahead; there may be little incentive to prevent students from falling through the cracks.

You can’t just put out a headline “Nearly 60% Won’t Graduate At South Side School” and then, oh by the way, mention that “44 Of 77 Students At Bradwell Elementary Did Not Pass Eighth Grade”, without thoroughly exploring the premise.  Sure the South Side of Chicago has a bad reputation, but there isn’t a South Side in America that doesn’t, so that doesn’t really explain anything to me.  In fact all I could really find on this school was a lone posting in an forum by someone that suggests that Bradwell Elementary has the highest number of Section 8 housing students than any other elementary school in CPS.  That was one and a half years ago though, perhaps that “fact” has changed sinec then.