Student Lives Matter

I have minimal experience with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system. Apart from hearing about the notorious stories of disparity and underfunding, I have no direct connection to them. Attending Loyola University Chicago has given me an insight to the struggles the public schools here face in the heart of one of America’s largest urban hubs.

The public schools I have attended, in my hometown of Cupertino, California, were fiercely competitive, extremely high-achieving, and demographically skewed, favoring Asian American populations. For the first 18 years of my life, my idea of public schools consisted of classrooms packed with straight-A students, two sets of textbooks for home and school use, and an aggressive race to get the best SAT score and be involved in the most extracurricular activities possible. It seemed like every student was fighting for the trio: stellar academics, athletic or an accomplished member of an academic club (speech and debate, school newspaper, DECA etc.) and played at least one instrument. After moving to Chicago, I was hit with a different state of reality.

This may be my naivete shining through, but it is the truth. My high school was an anomaly and by no means the norm. CPS faces a plethora of problems that I had not considered while being stuck in the bubble of my past. One of which includes the, “disproportionate numbers of arrests among people of color in relation to the population of the city of Chicago, and the numbers in Chicago Public Schools are no different.” (Reese). Ronnie Reese analyzes the relationship between CPS and racial tensions with the police force in the article, Student Lives Matter. With recent upheavals in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York, the Chicago Teachers Union has made it clear that they stand with the people opposing the grand jury’s decision regarding the two cases.

The amount of CPS students of color being arrested and are victims of police brutality is significant and constitutes a problem that needs immediate attention. Founding director of Project NIA, Mariame Kaba analyzed data from 2013 and says that in 2012, “African-American children made up more than 70 percent of school-based arrests, yet only 42 percent of the district.” (Reese). These staggering statistics impact the classroom and, in turn, the education received by these kids. There are institutional and structural forces at play here, but a better communication between the experiences of teacher and student is a step that could be taken.

There is a scary reality at play in the Chicago public schools and my recent awareness of the problem definitely opens my eyes to the issues being faced by students just a couple neighborhoods away.