Mike Klonsky reports that most schools in Chicago are violating the right of English language learners to mandated services they need.
The worst violators, naturally, were charter schools.
Fifteen were run by the UNO Network of Charter Schools; nine were run by the Noble Network of Charter Schools. (One of the Noble Network schools is named for its patron, Governor Bruce Rauner.)
In 2009, U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras lifted the consent decree ending three decades of efforts to integrate Chicago schools. The decree’s bilingual education provisions, according to Kocoras, duplicated protections in state law. The ruling came despite evidence presented by DOJ lawyers in court that the district repeatedly failed to enroll English learners in bilingual education fast enough or provide them with required services.
I would be remiss if I failed to point out once again, that it was former schools CEO Arne Duncan who successfully pushed Judge Kocoras to abandon the consent decree. Thousands of the district’s English language learners and their families are still paying the price.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But the pro-charter folks would argue that they should be allowed to limit themselves to the “strivers” and if an ELL student isn’t thriving with whatever the charter is giving them, that’s his own fault.
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Or: How to Segregate by Social and Economic Class 101
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It sounds like Chicago had a consent decree similar to that of NYC. Schools with twenty or more ELLs of the same language were entitled to bilingual education services. Duncan eliminated this decree, and now thousands of ELLs, whose parents cannot advocate for them, are in sink or swim mode in many schools. Most students cannot learn a new language through osmosis. They require explicit instruction from trained professionals to prepare them to function in an American school system. Based on the article, more than 90 CPS schools and about 5 charters are not in compliance. Charters have a lot fewer ELLs because they are more expensive to educate. I imagine the students in the charter schools are most likely on the advanced or transitional level as most charters would not accept beginners, the neediest group. Duncan’s astounding ignorance of the needs of this population is shocking. School districts should put authentic public educators that understand how to provide equitable programs to serve students with special needs in positions of leadership that set policy.
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The National Center for Education Statistics has a lot of information on ELL enrollments in public schools and how many ELL students also qualify for special education services. The people eager to pontificate about the performance of schools are ignorant about the students who are in each classification and even more ignorant about the number of students who are need of support for ELL and for special education. Here are 2017 reports on data gathered up to 2016. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=96
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I am surprised at the high level of classification of ELLs in the cluster of western states at over 22%. In my former district our classified ELL percentages were about 10%. Our goal was always to do what was best for the student. We tried to not classify ELLs for the first three years they were in the country unless the student’s disability was severe enough to warrant an earlier classification.
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I worked for years with Migrant Education and am distressed to learn this. Chicago schools committed a grave error and those responsible should be held accountable.
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