As a Chicago teen resident, I can speak on education here. There are definitely very smart people here, and some communities of schools are extremely educated (selective enrollment Chicago public schools). However, the education here is not evenly distributed. A big problem with our education system is our lack of equity. Many southside schools are underfunded, and it’s not fair. There are kids at these schools that are sometimes perfectly qualified for higher education, they just don’t have access to the necessary resources. As for the suburbs, education is decent there, but that’s because they have money. I wouldn’t say they have any super stellar schools, but they are good.
I’d count New Trier in the North Shore suburbs as an exception. It’s consistently rated among the top public high schools in the country, and they consistently place a lot of kids in outstanding colleges. All the Ivies and other top colleges know the school and its GCs, visit there at least annually, and recruit heavily there, making it one of the few schools in the entire Chicago metropolitan area that gets any attention at all from colleges at that level. .
@bclintonk I completely agree. New Trier definitely is closer to the selective enrollment structure of CPS. I don’t know much about it, but I know there are different levels for students, meaning some students are on a highly accelerated pathway (placed by testing). Suburbs definitely have a good education, it’s just not as condensed as CPS. This could be a good thing, though, because the distribution of education might be better. That being said, it may also be because the suburbs are definitely less diverse economically, racially, etc, than the city. Either way, I agree. New Trier is a top tier school in the greater Chicago area.
By “southside schools”, do you mean “schools where Black people live”?
@ucbalumnus No, that wasn’t my point. What I’m saying is that schools on the southside are underfunded, and it’s unfair. It’s true that the schools on the southside have a majority black population, but I think this is because of the historical racist divide in our city that is still apparent today. It’s evident that the economics of education in Chicago is not inclusive. I didn’t mean to make this about race, and I’m really sorry if I offended anybody.
My point was that most people on the southside and westside have less access to “selective” education. In our city, we have to take many tests in middle school in order to get into what we call “selective enrollment schools,” and kids are placed under a lot of pressure to get into the top 5 schools, which are mainly all farther north. In turn, many kids from the southside who are definitely high-achieving and deserving of an accelerated program, get left behind. IMO, the tests are stupid and everyone deserves to be able to go to the school they want, but funding makes that difficult. The fact that selective enrollment high schools get more funding and provide more opportunities for their students than other schools makes it a rigged game. Students who end up not making it into the selective enrollment schools because of their performance in middle school are already starting at a disadvantage.
To sum up my point, the education system in Chicago has pockets with a high-concentration of very intelligent kids, but only because the system is corrupt and racist. I think all schools should get the same funding and everyone just attends their neighborhood school, like in the suburbs. Sadly, that’s not the case in Chicago, and I don’t like it.
I’d add two points to riverandsasha3’s posts. First, I’d include the West Side to what’s been said about the South Side. Schools on the West Side are badly under-resourced, too. Many things seem to work that way in Chicago, not just education. The North Side generally gets better services than the South Side and the West Side.
Second, while the West Side is mostly black and Latino and on the whole very poor, the South Side is more mixed both racially and socioeconomically… There are some black middle class areas, and are some predominantly white neighborhoods, at least if you define the South Side broadly to include the predominantly white Southwest Side. I get the impression that public schools on the Southwest Side aren’t all that great, either, but then, I’m not sure how many white kids attend those schools. Many seem to be in Catholic schools which are a mixed bag in terms of educational quality… That seems to be part and parcel of the de facto racial segregation that is still predominant in Chicago, on the South Side in a more extreme form than on the North Side, though the North Side isn’t great, either. I lived in Chicago for 10 years—on the North Side, I might add—and I mostly loved it, but the politics and sociology of race in Chicago are abominable.
@bclintonk Totally agree with you. I’ve lived on the West side my whole life, and educational resources are scarce here, as well. Also, the South side is starting to become more diverse, but I’m not sure it’s in the best way. I’m still a teen, so my knowledge on the subject is limited, but I do know of the heavy gentrification going on in South side neighborhoods, like Bridgeport and Pilsen. I would say that this attributes to the increase in “diversity,” but these are also the same kids that have the means to drive to the selective enrollment schools on the North side. I think Chicago is one of the greatest cities to grow up in, but you’re right. There are still a lot of things that need to change.
New Trier high school, unsurprisingly, also serves one of the wealthiest communities in Illinois.