CV NEWS FEED // Chicago Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson has reportedly approved a plan to go after the city’s competitive selective-enrollment high schools months after promising during his campaign for election that he would not do so.
Johnson’s Board of Education cited “equity” as the reason for the move.
A recent resolution drafted by the Board claimed the schools promote “stratification and inequity in [Chicago Public Schools (CPS)] and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.”
CPS’s CEO is Johnson ally Pedro Martinez.
The Daily Mail’s Claudia Aoraha called the mayor’s sudden change “back peddling – by allowing a vote to stop gifted children from lower income backgrounds from academically competing to get into high-performing schools.”
“Chicago has 11 selective-enrollment high schools,” Aoraha explained, which “are not just the best in Chicago – but rank among the top high schools in the entire country.”
The Chicago Tribune pointed out that while the mayor was making his case to the voters, his campaign promised that “a Johnson administration would not end selective enrollment at CPS schools.”
Popular X (formerly Twitter) account and Substack author PoliMath criticized the alleged “equity” motive of the Johnson administration’s campaign against competitive schools:
When looking at incentives & gov’t actions, it’s good to remember that dead people are cheaper than sick people, it’s easier to destroy than create, and the fastest way to equality is not through helping those below the average but through punishing those above the average.
If your goal is equality and nothing but equality then the fastest way to achieve it is to make everyone equally miserable and poor.
Filmmaker Eli Steele took to X to call Johnson’s action “insane.”
“You know what he’s not axing?” Steele wrote: “The Chicago schools so subpar that only about 4% are proficient in math and 6% in reading.”
“This is an absolute assault on merit and America’s future,” he continued:
Where are the parents? The shame is on them if they don’t fight for their kids and take down this Mayor and his union.
“San Francisco did this to its elite college prep academy and saw a 25% or so increase in students who got a D or F,” noted former San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) board member Jason Wong. “It’s much easier to destroy something working than build it. For the kids, please focus on building not breaking.”
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) heavily backed the leftist mayor’s successful campaign earlier this year.
The Chicago Sun Times reported Friday that CTU was “pivotal” in helping Johnson win a closely contested election against the considerably more moderate Paul Vallas:
Representing roughly 30,000 Chicago Public Schools educators and related staff, the CTU has put more than $2.3 million into Johnson’s campaign fund since late 2022, and state and national teachers unions have given him another $3.3 million, according to campaign filings.
Also according to the Sun Times, Johnson, a former public school teacher, is himself a “longtime member” of and a “labor organizer” for CTU.
In September, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates made headlines after reports surfaced that she sent her oldest son to a private Catholic school despite her strident opposition to school choice.
“It was a very difficult decision for us because there is not a lot to offer black youth who are entering high school,” the union boss stated in an attempt to explain her decision at the time.
In an X (then known as Twitter) post last year, Davis Gates called school choice “actually the choice of racists.”
“It was created to avoid integrating schools with Black children,” she wrote. “Now it’s the civil rights struggle of our generation?”
Just days later, CNN’s Abby Phillip grilled the CTU president during an on-air interview.
“I think at the end of the day, people are asking here about whether the rhetoric matches your actions,” Phillip said.
Davis Gates is known to be among Johnson’s closest allies.
