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Getting into a “good” high school is life or death. That’s what all teachers have drilled into my classmates and me since we knew what high school was.
“If you don’t get into a good high school, you won’t get into a good college, and then your life will be over!” That’s what they say to us in so many words, imprinting it on our minds and souls.
But that amount of pressure is placed on the backs of 12- and 13-year-olds. Can you imagine getting up every day, worrying about changing social dynamics, your appearance, puberty, your homework, sports and all of your extracurriculars, social media, and what high school you’re going to? It’s definitely more complicated than the 1980s, folks.
“Sure, but getting into high school all over the country is stressful,” naysayers argue. “Why are Chicago Public Schools students so whiny about it?”
There is, however, a reason for all the carrying on. Many of them, actually.
CPS has a systemic issue with discrepancies between white and nonwhite high school applicants, causing most top high schools — Walter Payton, Whitney Young and Lane Tech — to have more white students than of any other race. Chicago is a diverse city with no large majority of any race. So why are there so many white students at top schools?
In many cases, white families have more income than nonwhite families, and those families will be able to afford expensive tutoring and test prep classes that less financially fortunate students do not have access to. But this does not mean that students without test prep are less intelligent than students with it; in fact, it implies the opposite.
If students are able to make it into top schools without excessive training, it demonstrates that they are just as smart, and with proper guidance and tools, they would be able to do so much more.
But racial inequality is not the only problem with the CPS high school admissions process.
This year, the High School Admissions Test, or HSAT, had so many technical issues that CPS shut it down for weeks until students could retake it. The normal test anxiety my classmates and I felt was only heightened when we had trouble logging in and we read questions in Spanish, when we don’t even take Spanish as an elective.
This happened due to an issue with the testing vendor that CPS is using. The vendor was new, and the program testing was obviously not sufficient.
Can you imagine being super-stressed about an important test with the knowledge that other students in your class have had extensive test prep while you didn’t even know what to study? It would make an already hard and stressful situation even worse. Stress is known to make decisions more difficult. Nevertheless, everyone has to take the test to go to a “good school.”
This issue is not new. People have been calling for equality throughout the admissions process for years, but the only thing CPS has done is create the tier system.
In simple terms, the tier system separates you by the economic status of your neighborhood, with tier one being the poorest and tier four being the richest. But this doesn’t break down financial barriers in the way CPS undoubtedly hoped it would. Even in tier one, where the average income is the lowest, those with more money will still have an advantage.
Some people will also move from a house in tier four to a house in tier one, to attempt to beat the system. It works because the student’s tests will be scored based on the fact they “live” in a tier one community.
It’s hard to think of a good solution to this problem. CPS could expand the test to cover more subjects than just math and English, but that would just draw out the testing process and make the test harder to score and study for. CPS could make all of its schools just as good as Walter Payton, but our city is already so deep in debt, and that would be expensive to a fault.
Chicago Tribune Opinion
But there is a better solution.
CPS should create free after-school study groups for the HSAT. Teachers would stay after school for an hour once a week or every other week starting at the beginning of the eighth grade school year and ending right after eighth graders take the admissions exam. This would provide an opportunity for children from lower-income families to receive the same test prep opportunities that upper- and middle-income students have.
Naturally, there will still be unfairness in the system. There are better teachers and more involved parents throughout Chicago. But one extra hour of test prep could mean the difference between getting in to Lane Tech or not.
And of course, this would be expensive. The overtime hourly rate for teachers is about $47.88, and there are around 460 middle schools in CPS. This would amount to $22,024.80 per week. But with how responsibly Chicago spends its money, this wouldn’t be much of a struggle. Chicago spent more than $3.5 million on the 2023 NASCAR race. How much is roughly $22,000 a week?
What is the price that CPS is willing to pay for fair and equal educational opportunities? What is the price of educating the next generation?
Charlotte Badgley-Green is an eighth grader in Chicago Public Schools who is going through the high school admissions process.
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