CPS education performance, measured by graduation rates, is a mirage concealing a district with abysmal school performance and increasingly fewer quality school choices. It has city families voting with their feet
CPS’ record graduation rate is not a product of a quality education but of a system of diminished standards and abandoned accountability that socially promotes students. This is how you achieve a graduation rate of 83.4 percent when only one in five CPS students met SAT standards in reading and math, while 40 percent of high school students, including 72 percent of seniors, are truant. Chicago families are voting with their feet, delivering a verdict, even among low-income families, that they would rather endure financial hardship by sending their children to private schools or leave the city altogether.
There is much to be skeptical about when CPS claims a record graduation rate. Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration had a much-publicized scandal involving deliberate manipulation of data, and controversies continue to center around how students exiting the system are counted. During COVID, for example, over 33,000 students left the system while graduation rates improved. Debate over data manipulation aside, there is no debate that the school district’s return to socially promoting students is widening the gap between graduation rates and actual academic proficiency.
Gutting standards and accountability and a return to social promotion in Chicago
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has been lowering, altering, or eliminating traditional educational benchmarks in favor of “equity-based” grading models, lowering proficiency thresholds, and moving away from standardized testing and accountability metrics. These shifting benchmarks hide systemic underperformance and contribute to massive grade inflation across the district, resulting in an increasing number of students graduating from high school who are prepared for neither college nor the work world.
The district has dramatically scaled back reliance on standardized assessments as a tool to evaluate student progress, teacher effectiveness, and school quality, going as far as to end the ranking of schools by academic performance, denying parents the ability to assess their child’s school performance and compare schools. Removing these test metrics masks the reality of student outcomes, leading to a major gap between high graduation rates and academic proficiency while protecting failing schools and ineffective teachers.
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has pushed to de-emphasize or eliminate standardized testing, arguing it unfairly penalizes disadvantaged students. CTU President Stacy Davis Gates argues that standardized exams trace their roots directly back to the early-20th-century eugenics movement, which historically sought to prove the intellectual inferiority of Black individuals. Her core argument is that school systems can’t fairly measure the intelligence or capability of Black children using an assessment tool built upon those historical foundations.
The abandonment of standards and accountability has been extended to CTU itself, which has been responsible for constant school disruptions, strikes, and the diversion of instructional time to non-instructional activities. Prior to the CORE Caucus seizing control over the CTU, the teacher’s union had not gone on strike since 1987. CORE disrupted decades of labor peace by mobilizing teachers for multiple shutdowns: A seven-day walkout in 2012, an 11-day walkout in 2019, and keeping school campuses shuttered for 78 consecutive weeks after COVID struck, with devastating consequences for student learning, mental health, and personal safety.
Illinois follows suit
Not to be outdone, Illinois has joined the bandwagon of a few states playing it fast and loose with educational standards, lowering its proficiency standards while bragging about academic progress. The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) approved plans to lower the scores required to be considered proficient in reading and math on assessments like the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (grades 3–8) and to replace the SAT with the ACT for high school students. Meanwhile, Governor Pritzker restored the rights of the CTU to effectively strike for practically any reason.
Chalkbeat reported that under the new assessment system, 53 percent of tested students statewide are now marked “proficient” in reading and 38 percent in math — whereas last year, 41 percent were marked proficient in reading and 28 percent in math. In Chicago, 40.6 percent are now marked proficient in reading and 31 percent in math — whereas last year, 30.5 percent and 18.3 percent were proficient, respectively. These recent test scores, still abysmal, did not reflect that students learned more, just that more of them were marked proficient.
Illinois also conveniently transitioned its required high school assessment in 2025 from the SAT to the ACT, setting new proficiency benchmarks that are lower than previous thresholds. In past years, the state used the more rigorous SAT to measure high school proficiency. The State Board of Education’s excuse was that SAT standards set expectations above national benchmarks, justifying the shift to the ACT. Illinois students’ performance on the ACT trails the national average for those students who are required by the state to take the test.
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data shows Illinois students continue to struggle to meet proficiency standards in reading and math, with between 30 percent and 38 percent meeting proficiency, depending on subject and grade. State data shows persistent learning deficits, particularly among younger, low-income, and minority demographics. The state report card shows low-income students scored 16 percentage points below the statewide average in reading and math. Black students scored 21 to 23 percentage points lower, and Hispanic students 12 to 13 points lower.
The incredible shrinking school district in Chicago
CTU-led strikes, shutdowns, and anti-accountability policies have accelerated an enrollment free-fall in Chicago Public Schools. Chicago families continue to vote with their feet, delivering a verdict, even among low-income families, that they’d rather endure financial hardship by sending their children to private schools or leave the city and even the state altogether. CPS enrollment has fallen in 2026–2027 to a historic low of 304,687 students from a modern-day peak of over 439,000 in 2022–23, a year after I departed as school district CEO. This is a decline of nearly 135,000 students.
While falling birthrates are partially to blame, new families and families with school-age children moving out of Chicago to nearby suburbs and collar counties have heavily impacted enrollment, including contributing to the falling birthrates. In fact, the largest exodus over the last two decades has been Black families with school-age children. The Black adult population in Chicago today is 14 percent lower than it was in 2000, but the child population is 49 percent lower. Today, the Black student population in CPS is half what it was in 2000.
Educational achievement measured by graduation rates alone can become a mirage. A diploma matters, but so does what it represents. Families deserve clear academic information, meaningful standards, reliable instruction, and quality school choices — including neighborhood schools, public charter schools, and selective-enrollment and magnet schools. CPS should celebrate students who earn their diplomas. It should not use those diplomas to close the discussion about whether students received the education they deserved.
