Here’s what we’re reading this week: CPS graduation rates, Michele Clark HS, and policing children

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These were a few standout pieces on our radar this week. 

  • Chicago narrows racial gaps in 5-year graduation rate, but disparities persist, by Mila Koumpilova in Chalkbeat Chicago. An analysis of graduation rates recently released by CPS seems to show increased graduation rates across the board, with stubborn racial disparities. We’re keeping an eye on how this data shakes out. “Chicago says gains among Black students drove improvements in its five-year graduation rate. Still, there was a 12-percentage point gap between Black students and Asian American students, who graduate at the highest rates in the district.”
  • A Chicago High School Reopens, with Fears of Gun Violence, by Peter Slevin in the New Yorker. A slice-of-life about Michele Clark High School in South Austin. It’s a good story, but feels like it’s missing the bigger picture. “The school’s approach has long been to support first, then teach, but, once the pandemic took hold, the students’ needs ran deeper. Black Chicagoans died of covid at more than twice the rate of white residents. Unemployment rose in neighborhoods that already had some of the highest jobless rates in the city, leaving more families without enough food to eat or space for children to study. And then there was the strain of startling new levels of gun violence. Attendance at remote and hybrid school was sporadic.”
  • Tiny wrists in cuffs: How police use force against children, by Helen Wieffering, Colleen Long and Camille Fassett from the Associated Press. A piece about Black children being handled with force by the police, featuring a family from Chicago’s South Side. We know Black children being overpoliced in schools is a persistent problem in Chicago and across the country. “Kids are still an afterthought in reforms championed by lawmakers and pushed by police departments. But in case after case, an Associated Press investigation has found that children as young as 6 have been treated harshly — even brutally — by officers of the law.”

What are you reading this week? Let us know in a comment below or on one of our social channels.

Photo by Reagan Freeman on Unsplash

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