Parent group says CPS school closure report lacks info on student impact

Story by: Christopher Brinckerhoff

April 24, 2009 – A leader of a top parent advocacy group said a long-awaited report released by the Chicago Public Schools last week is missing critical information on how school closings affect students, which was to be the main emphasis of the review.

Julie Woestehoff, director of Parents United for Responsible Education, had been lobbying for the release of the Closed Schools Impact Study – mandated by CPS policy – for several months. After a number of inquiries by Woestehoff and the press, the report was released last week.

Woestehoff wrote on her blog on April 16 that the report did not focus on the impact of school closings on students as required by CPS policy.

“We thought the point of this report was to monitor any harm that might come to individual students as a result of school closings,” Woestehoff wrote.

She said some of the questions left unanswered by the report include the number of students who dropped out instead of attending a new school and the number of students who lost academic ground after moving to new schools.

In his letter to Woestehoff, CPS CEO Ron Huberman wrote, “I have been advised that CPS staff did not prepare a similar report for schools that closed at the end of the 2006-2007 school year. At the end of the current school year, CPS staff will be preparing a report on schools that closed in 2008. I have directed that the analysis also include any schools that closed in 2007.”

When asked about the recent reports two weeks ago CPS spokesman Malon Edwards said, “At this point they still are conducting the study, and hopefully sometime this year it will be released. They’re not quite sure exactly when. They don’t know exactly when it’s going to be done because remember they’re looking at a lot of data.”

The Chicago Teachers Union has also been critical of the way CPS has handled school closings, phase-outs, consolidations and turnarounds. They questioned the motives behind the choices of schools to close.

CTU president Marilyn Stewart said in a recent interview her organization has looked at research on school closings and concluded some schools CPS has closed were not underperforming.

“And the schools that they’re opening were not doing statistically significant better than the schools that they’re closing,” Stewart said. “In fact some schools are doing better. If there are other schools that are underperforming, why would you close schools that are not underperforming? Location, location, location.”