Backwards, My Priorities Are.

In 2002 at Richard’s Career Academy¹, the group of freshman that entered were numbered at around 210. Pretty big for a school who’s overall student population is generally in the low 500’s. How many graduated in 2006? Sixty.

How many of those went to college? No idea, but I am personally acquainted with a few who were just happy to have that piece of paper so could get a decent-paying job to support—who? Ah yes, the girl they married junior year. When they were both eighteen.

No, she couldn’t make it to the ceremony. The baby had a doctor’s appointment.

At Farragut Career Academy (see?), UIC is seen as the Holy Grail of higher education. Plans to attend Harold Washington invoke reactions like, Wow, yeah? and You goin’ to more school after dis? Columbia college is seen as the ’smart kids’ school, because at places like Farragut, the smarter kids tend to be the more artsy bunch, and so art and intelligence are associated.

And yet even the smartest of the group, the ones that have read a few books outside of class, are terrified of not being accepted to a place like UIC or Columbia. They have 3.5 GPA’s, so grades aren’t the problem. They’re records are clean: no fights, no ditching. So what is it?

Oh yes. The motherfucking ACT score.

Farragut is a special case. The principal, bless her skanky soul, knows her salary and funding are based on data. Data like attendance, graduation rate, and what?

The motherfucking ACT scores.

So, since they were freshman, these students have had this test shoved down their throats. Teachers are required to model all their exams after it, then the scores are averaged by department (Math, Science, English) and put up on a big board to see where the kids need improvement. Not only that, but ACT Prep is a mandatory class for all juniors.

Sounds like a fantastic system for improvement, no?

In theory, yes. In practice—the school average is still a 15.4

The teachers—science teachers in particular—get frustrated beyond all reason at having to deliver ACT-style exams. I have talked to four Farragut science teachers, and they agree that the Science portion of the exam has nothing at all to do with science. My physics teacher actually got reprimanded (read: taken into the principal’s office and hollered at like he’d lit up a joint with us and discussed the best way to key the Vice Principal’s car without getting caught) for only making half of his whole mid-term ACT-based. Pissed off teachers are not good teachers, and could give a shit about the needs of the administration. Does this modeling even help improve scores? Not when the difficulty level of said questions would be laughed off the ACT booklet.

ACT Prep is an even bigger joke. The teachers in charge of this class fall into three categories:

1. They have connections with the principal, and don’t want to have to teach five ‘real’ classes.

2. They are first-year teachers, not trusted with teaching five ‘real’ classes.

3. They need to be teaching something to stay a part of the school (i.e. the basketball coach that has won them numerous championships and coached Kevin Garnett in 1995).

I learned what a noun was. What a run-on sentence was. How to apply the Pythagorean Theorem. Our class spent a week or two finishing the odd problems on a practice test—in groups (read: cheating).

The prospect of college is put on a pedestal and made into this vague, mystical, unattainable thing. Posters everywhere: some subtly threatening poverty, some cheerful and childlike encouraging them to “Make College YOUR Option!”. Teachers have adapted to asking, “Are you thinking about maybe going to college?” (taken verbatim). A new graduation requirement has been implicated at Farragut in the past two or three years: You must have three college applications on record in order to graduate.

And a staggering number kids have actually failed to graduate because of this. How many of them do you think they come back the following year for another crack at high school?

One man summed the situation up perfectly:

“In Whitney Young, Walter Payton, Northside—the question isn’t, ‘Are you going to college?’ The question is, ‘What college are you going to?’” (CDR Keith Grimes….who fucking rocks).

The point of this rant?

TO CPS ADMINISTRATION:

Quit your bitching. Stop treating the kids like criminals (They’re not all out to stab you. Although if you keep treating them like shit, that could change.) Leave the teachers alone. You have never stood up and tried to teach a group of 38 (above the legal limit) teenagers something they have no remote interest in. And for God’s sake, cool it with the ACT. If anything, model yourself after WY: just give every junior a joint and say “Spark it up, mothefuckers.”