The Chicago Principals and Administrators Association examined district data and made a stunning discovery. The ten schools with the highest proportion of white students received over $1 million in special education funding. The ten schools with the lowest percentage of white students received $0 in special education funding.
The Association is not proposing to take money away from the schools that currently receive it. Instead, they ask that all schools receive the funding they need for students with disabilities.
Troy LaRaviere, president of the Association, writes:
The racially discriminatory behaviors of the Emanuel appointees at CPS uncovered in our analysis are profoundly disturbing. However I want to make it clear that although this report highlights disparities between resources allocated to schools serving white students and those serving black and brown students, this is not a call for people of color to protest the resources given to white students; it is a call for all people of good conscience – regardless of race and ethnicity – to voice our profound discontent with the race and class based decision-making of the Mayor’s appointees at Chicago Public Schools: In addition, the woefully inadequate base funding that created the need for the appeals process is depriving all schools of critical resources they needed to develop the full human potential of their students because it pits schools against one another to beg for a share of an artificially low pool of funds.
To say it more directly, majority white schools like Mount Greenwood and Edison Park should not be the targets of our discontent. On the contrary, it is my hope that the majority white community of Mount Greenwood will express its outrage at the denial of resources for majority black schools like Mount Vernon, and that the families at a majority white school like Edison Park will voice their discontent with the abject neglect with which CPS treats majority Hispanic schools like Hanson Park.
We must not let our political leaders pit us against one another. We must not let them set us up to fight over the scraps they throw behind for our children after doling out multi-million dollar contracts, tax breaks, and interest payments to the profit driven selfish corporate interests they serve. We must see our common destiny as families of Chicago and work to build a city and public school system that invests in the realization of the potential of every single child.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Were the resources denied to majority non-white schools, or did the schools not apply for special ed resources?
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From the IllinoisConstitution:
“ARTICLE X EDUCATION
SECTION 1. GOAL – FREE SCHOOLS
A fundamental goal of the People of the State is the educational development of all persons to the limits of their capacities.
The State shall provide for an efficient system of high quality public educational institutions and services. Education in public schools through the secondary level shall be free. There may be such other free education as the General Assembly provides by law. The State has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education.”
Seems to me as there is a constitutional crisis concerning education in Chicago (and I’m sure, the rest of the state).
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Yup although the language is so vague that they have gotten away with leaving most of the funding up to local districts.
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The language doesn’t seem vague to me.
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‘ The State shall provide for an efficient system of high quality public educational institutions and services. … The State has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education.” ‘
What is an “efficient system”? What are “high quality public educational institutions and services”? Who defines these terms? What does it mean that the state has the primary responsibility for financing education? If that means they are supposed to fund the schools, they blew that one off long ago.
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Of course, there is one important piece of data missing: Compared needs… It’s easy to say that one building gets all, the other gets nothing – but without a needs comparison, that statement makes no sense.
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L. Kinyon. Quite right. Schools where all the children are black should not get anything at all.
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Hm, let’s see. You are speaking of SPECIAL ED funding. Last I heard, that was sent to where there were SPECIAL ED needs, If there are NO SPECIAL ED needs, then why send SPECIAL ED funds? There are school here which receive no SPECIAL ED funds – because there is no SPECIAL ED need.
If it were GENERAL ED school funding that looked like that, I would wholeheartedly agree there is something wrong. But just because is school has a majority black population should not determine whether or not SPECIAL ED funds are needed. Making that assumption sounds like, what, maybe racist???
Which is why I made the initial statement: There is IMPORTANT information missing in the original post.
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L. Kinyon: Are you conjecturing that the ten schools with the lowest percentage of White students have no need whatsoever for special-education funding? If so, then how likely do you believe it is that your conjecture is true?
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Not sure where you get that idea from. ALL I said was there is information missing that is vital to get a correct understanding.
Just “he ten schools with the highest proportion of white students received over $1 million in special education funding. The ten schools with the lowest percentage of white students received $0 in special education funding…”
That does not tell me anything about the WHY the disparity seems to exist. From the sounds of it, it’s because the schools are mostly white vs mostly black. That would be, again, racist (actually, not racist, but ethnocentric).
What are the SPECIAL ED needs in both groups? Granted, I would find it hard to believe that the “whitest” schools would have all the SPECIAL ED needs, and the “blackest” schools would have none.
But that information is nowhere to be found in the original post, making it useless information…
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L. Kinyon: all schools have kids with special education needs. Unless they are charter schools.
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I beg to differ.
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Can you identify urban schools with 0% kids with disabilities?
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I disagreed with your original statement, “all schools have kids with special education needs. Unless they are charter schools.” Note: ALL schools… UNLESS…
Now you are limiting your view to “URBAN” schools.
By making that limitation, you seem to accept that indeed, there indeed ARE schools where there are no SPECIAL ED needs.
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Kinyon,
The post is about Chicago public schools. Please identify a public schoool in Chicago, whether more or less white or black, that has zero students with disabilities.
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Actually I don’t know of any public school that has zero children with special needs. Do you?
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Seems not to matter. You have your mind made up.
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Yes, my mind is made up based on facts and evidence. There are children with special needs in every public school in Chicago.
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A few years back, they changed the eligibility determination process. Rather than looking for a discrepancy between expected and actual performance (which was limited in its own way), they chose to look for a significant difference in performance between peers. I worked in a low income district high school where the average reading level was around the sixth grade. Therefore, a student had to be functioning at the fourth grade or less to receive services. In the high rent districts in which I taught previously a significant proportion of the low income population would have received services not available in their home district. I don’t know how they determine eligibility for special ed services in Chicago, but I can practically guarantee that there are no public schools that do not have children who should be receiving extra services.
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L. Kinyon, I am a special education teacher in Chicago and the co-chair of the Special Education Committee for the Chicago Teachers Union. Let me clarify, the predominately white, middle-class schools where the funds are going are NOT needier than the African-American schools receiving no funding. In fact, thanks to environmental racism (and an epidemic of lead-poisoning in low-SES communities) and the trauma too prevalent in our disinvested Black communities, there is often more need.
Whiter, more middle-class schools have parents who bring lawyers to IEP meetings. So they get more. And CPS allows these inequalities to continue as a cost saver. They have no interest in meeting the needs of Black and Brown children. And so they don’t. We don’t want to take away from white children with special needs, we want ALL children to get what they deserve without these glaring racial disparities.
I work at an African-American school and we were denied an appeal THREE times last year. And our students suffered.
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Diane
Will you please stop discussing “POLITICS” . It is really tiresome you conflating “who gets what ” with education.
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hahahahaha.
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A clearer example of institutional racism I’ve never seen.
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I used to do substitute teaching in SubCenter South for Chicago. I’d average around 8-11 days a year because I only did that as a ‘second job’ when my main job was teaching in a suburb of Chicago.
Back in those days I viewed Chicago teachers as being high paid. (My salary was always very low compared to many other districts.) I enjoyed getting $85 a day extra for sub work. I saw firsthand how bad some of the schools were. Some had rotten principals, intercom systems that blared notices constantly, schools that needed repairs, filthy weedy parking lots for teachers and some that were really well run.
Sometimes I worked in special needs classes. (Don’t remember the titles of what type.)
In my opinion, just about all of these kids needed help of some kind. They are suffering from PSTD even though it isn’t labeled that.
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“intercom systems that blared notices constantly,”
One of my pet peeves. But it makes sense when you think about it. Adminimals and their needs are far more important than the needs of the students in the teaching and learning process.
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This is likely true nationwide.
The reason, aside from awful policy and all that, is because of priveledged white parents pushing hard and hiring lawyers and being hyper-engaged. These are the same parents our side is relying on to carry our water. They can’t be expected to as full-throatedly push for equal funding in districts where the Jakes and Dylans don’t go to school.
Tough spot.
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You touch on a behind-the-scenes point: where savvy middle-class/wealthy and often dominant culture parents write grant requests (and even take grant-writing classes), schools garner more money.
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It opens up a view towards one of the problems with letting parents take the lead in the anti-reform/privatization effort, and why it should be unionized-teacher-led.
Teachers defending the commons of public education and leading the movement is essential and right because, inevitably, we stand against any type of school segregation, whether it’s racial or socio-economic or whatever. Parents, especially the socio-politically motivated ones, on the other hand, well, let’s be honest…..when it comes to the showdown they will do whatever they have to to get their kids an advantage, even if it means “playing the game” of reinforcing and engaging with segregated schools. Obviously I’m not talking about all parents and such, but as a group this has to be seen as a problem on our side. Further, many of the deeply politically engaged parents who support our side are also likely the first to make sure “their” schools have the appropriate advantages for their kid. Simple facts.
Teachers, coming from a place of labor, want to see equal funding for schools on every level and naturally fight to “raise all boats.” This is what unions do.
I’ve been criticized a bunch for being critical of the parents as leaders of our movement. Of course, so many of our victories are because of them so far and the unions have abandoned the battlefield for the most part. That said, parents as an organized group….well, gotta keep an eye on em.
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Hey now, NYSTEACHER!
You got a problem with Jacob as a first name?
Allow me to relate a little story:
On the pole at the end of the basement bar read just one of three yellowed framed Western Union telegrams:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. H (stop)
We’re are notifying you (stop)
That your son, Jacob (stop)
is missing in action (stop)
We will inform you (stop)
when more information is available (stop)
You see, Jacob H. was a ball turret gunner in WW2 whose plane collided with another plane over the coast of Italy en route to a bombing mission in Germany. That Jake was the only survivor of the ocean crash of those two planes and was picked out of the water and turned over to the Germans. He was a POW for the rest of the war.
Now, for the rest of the story.
Back in the eighties Mr. H (as I knew him as he was my friends’ dad) used to complain that no one named their boys Jacob anymore. Now he had named one of his 7 boys Jacob (with whom I share a birthday), but he was truly saddened that no one was naming their son Jake. In the late eighties I told him that I had named my son Jacob. Man was he happy.
My Jake must have been one of the first of many boys named Jake because by the mid 90s Jacob held first place in the most used names for baby boys.
Now, maybe NYSTEACHER you have encountered some bratty Jakes and their parents in your teaching career. Perhaps it’s in the water where you teach. But all the Jakes I know are good dudes and certainly not spoiled brats!
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I was just trying to shoot off a few names I’ve heard around the hipper set of parents. Jacob is a fine name and I don’t mind it. Sorry if I offended. Was trying to say something without having to say it too crisply. Totally didn’t meant to offend the proper name Jacob.
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No offense taken. I understood what you were attempting to say. It just gave me a chance to tell the little story of Mr. H. and the name Jacob/Jake which happens to be my oldest’s name.
But seeing the W.U. telegrams up close as a teenager sure drove home the intensity of what they had to have meant to Mr. H’s parents.
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