Name: As grades and attendance slip, CPS places hopes on schools reopening, citing risk of ‘losing an entire generation of students’
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As grades and attendance slip, CPS places hopes on schools reopening, citing risk of ‘losing an entire generation of students’

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AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneNov 19, 2020 at 6:54 pmWith hard return dates for elementary school students contingent upon the status of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chicago Public Schools officials are challenged by how to improve on poor attendance rates they saw during the remote fall quarter.“The consequences here are not theoretical,” said Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade. “Research tells us that if we do not act with urgency, we will be in danger of losing an entire generation of students. It is often said that access to health care should be a fundamental right of all people. Well, the same holds true for a high-quality education.”AdvertisementDuring Wednesday’s Chicago Board of Education meeting, McDade presented data on attendance and grades for fall quarter, which ended the first week of November.The drop in attendance was most notable among African American students, whose attendance rate decreased by 5 percentage points from last fall, McDade said.AdvertisementOverall, this fall’s attendance rate was 91.3%, down from 94.2% last fall. For Black students, the rate was 88.1%; for Latino students, 91.9%; for white students, 96.2%; for Asian students, 96.9%; and for multiracial students, 95.1%.Attendance also varied among the district’s priority groups, at 81.9% for students in temporary living situations, 87% for students with individualized education plans, 90.2% for economically disadvantaged students and 92.3% for students learning English.While attendance rates were lower than last fall for all grades, the gap was the biggest for high school students, and seniors had the lowest rate of 84.9%, according to data provided by CPS.First-quarter grades showed disparities similar to attendance.Fewer passing grades, particularly B’s and C’s, were given in core subjects. Among elementary students, 5.1% of math grades and 5% of reading grades were F’s, compared with 2.1% and 1.9% last fall. D’s also increased, accounting for 8.6% of math and 8.8% of reading grades. Another 23.1% of math and 24% of reading grades were C’s, 26.6% of math and 26.9% of reading grades were B’s, and 35.3% of math and 34% of reading grades were A’s, according to CPS data.Among high school students, 13% of math grades and 11.9% of reading grades were F’s, 11.4% of math and 10.1% of reading grades were D’s; 15.9% of math and 14.4% of reading grades were C’s; 23.7% of math and 21.8% of reading grades were B’s; and 36% of math and 41.8% of reading grades were A’s.“Overall we are seeing that students were assigned more A’s, but also more F’s relative to last year,” McDade said.Last year, for example, 9.5% of high school math grades were F’s and 29.2% were A’s.AdvertisementWhile the trend holds true for all students, African American and Latino students, the most likely to live in neighborhoods that have dealt with the city’s highest COVID-19 rates, had the largest increases in failing marks for reading and math, according to data provided by the district.Students experiencing homelessness were assigned the lowest proportion of passing grades across core subjects.“What is clear ... is that we continue to struggle with the issue of equity,” McDade said. “Our African American, Latinx and students in priority groups have not been served well enough by remote learning to experience success. While there is room for improvements of remote learning, we must also push hard to open our classrooms so we can ensure greater access.”Many students need supports and services beyond academics that can’t be provided in a remote environment, she said. McDade said the district will conduct a “root cause analysis” to identify barriers to student success.In the meantime, CPS is expanding its “learning hub” child supervision sites and planning for potential reopening starting in January. The plan would have students in prekindergarten and special education clusters return Jan. 11, to be joined by other elementary grades Feb. 1. Opt-in forms are due Nov. 23, and remote learning will continue to be an option.The district will “evaluate opportunities” to bring back high school students later in 2021, McDade said.Advertisement“We will reopen schools safely and responsibly, and only if our public health officials deem it’s safe to do so, but we have a moral responsibility to do everything possible to bring our children back into the classroom,” McDade said. “Our students are hurting right now, especially our most vulnerable students.”District staff on Wednesday provided more details about the testing plans they’re still developing, which include attempting to measure prevalence among asymptomatic school-based staff.CPS and the Chicago Department of Public Health are working on a COVID-19 testing plan that they say will be ready by the time in-person learning resumes. The outline includes regular “surveillance testing” of staff using a rapid testing system developed by Abbott called BinaxNOW.BinaxNOW, in use at many other schools and universities nationwide, involves a nasal swab that can be inserted into a test card, which provides results within 15 minutes. It’s designed to be linked with an app that gives temporary digital passes to people who test negative.Marielle Fricchione, a pediatrics and infectious disease specialist with city health department, said the testing options are changing daily, but the current plan involves the BinaxNOW cards that will be provided through the federal government.The district expects to receive 30,000 COVID-19 test cards by early December, which CDPH believes will be enough for the rest of the school year, according to a presentation to the school board.AdvertisementIn order to proceed with its phased-in reopening plan, CPS has set a case doubling time of 18 days as the metric to watch. Currently, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in Chicago is doubling every 12 days, and the Chicago Department of Public Health and CPS believe a 50% improvement would allow for safe reopening.Fricchione said health officials looked at local data from the first wave of the pandemic along with data from other countries that have already experienced more than one wave. Doubling time seems to be a good indicator of community spread stabilizing and the curve flattening, she said.“The essential point there is that teachers aren’t walking in the door sick ... and the fewer people that are walking in the door sick, the less contact tracing needs to happen,” Fricchione said.The current staffing and resources necessary to trace thousands of cases a day is not sustainable, she said.“When you look at some of these schools that are open, they are pausing or stopping because they can’t sustain the mitigation strategies, not because there’s transmission in schools,” Fricchione said. “And so we want to get to that point where the curve is flattening.”Noting that different metrics such as percent positivity had been cited in earlier reopening conversations, Board of Education President Miguel del Valle asked if any other factors will be used besides doubling time. Fricchione indicated additional facts would be considered but didn’t have a definitive answer on what those may be.Advertisement“We talk nearly every day about the trajectory of this outbreak, and new data comes out every single day and we review it and try to make sense of it,” Fricchione said. “... It absolutely may change, and I think communicating that we are committed to reviewing all data as it comes in may be more important than sort of sticking to one metric.”But if the doubling time hasn’t improved from what it is today, schools cannot reopen, she said.hleone@chicagotribune.com Advertisement

AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneNov 19, 2020 at 6:54 pmWith hard return dates for elementary school students contingent upon the status of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chicago Public Schools officials are challenged by how to improve on poor attendance rates they saw during the remote fall quarter.“The consequences here are not theoretical,” said Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade. “Research tells us that if we do not act with urgency, we will be in danger of losing an entire generation of students. It is often said that access to health care should be a fundamental right of all people. Well,...

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Hannah Leone

The Chicago Tribune is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the 6th highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017.

As grades and attendance slip, CPS places hopes on schools reopening, citing risk of ‘losing an entire generation of students’

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