CTU’s model is about union control, not children's education and safety. Change will only come if the CTU’s stranglehold, which overrides the mayor and school board, is broken
Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union’s “sustainable community schools” model claims to be a “holistic” approach to education. In reality, it is the latest entry in the national teachers union playbook — dressing up demands for more money, more power, and the elimination of independent public school competition as advocacy for children. There is a better way to build strong community schools, but it requires dismantling the CTU's grip on public education governance.
The CTU promotes neighborhood schools while insisting public support for charter and selective enrollment schools is a financial threat to those same neighborhood schools. Don't be fooled. Degrading and ultimately eliminating charter and magnet schools will strip poor Chicago families — overwhelmingly Black and Latino — of the quality school choices they depend on. In Chicago, more than 54,000 students attend public charter schools, and 97.8 percent of them are Black or Latino.
Let’s correct the misinformation campaign pushed by the CTU, Johnson, and their school board allies.
Myth No. 1: Charter and selective enrollment schools financially shortchange neighborhood schools
Not so. State and local school funding formulas require money to follow students. Yet Chicago's public charter schools actually receive significantly less funding per student — roughly 30 to 36 percent less on a per-pupil basis — with virtually no facility support. As for selective enrollment magnet schools, 11 exist among CPS's 147 high schools. All but two spend less per student than the district average. In fact, in 2025, CPS spent on average $3,285 more per student at the district level than at its top eight selective enrollment high schools.
Myth No. 2: Support for charter and selective enrollment schools is structural racism
The numbers say otherwise. Chicago's charter and selective enrollment schools overwhelmingly serve low-income and minority families. Among public charter school students, 97.8 percent are Black or Latino and 86 percent come from low-income households. Of the roughly 12,000 students attending Chicago's selective enrollment high schools, over 70 percent are Black or Hispanic and over 50 percent are low-income.
Charter schools in Chicago generally perform better than or similar to traditional Chicago Public Schools (CPS) on key metrics, particularly in high school, with significantly higher rates of college enrollment and persistence. This comes despite significant inequities in funding and ever-burdensome mandates that are intended to deliberately interfere with charter schools' ability to innovate, recruit, and retain both students and staff.
Achievement gaps between black and white students, and between low-income and non-low-income students, are dramatically smaller at selective enrollment schools. While only one general-education Chicago public high school — Lincoln Park High School — had more than half of its 11th grade students score at or above proficiency in reading and math, seven of the 11 selective enrollment high schools surpassed that threshold.
The transition away from charter and selective enrollment schools will harm, above all, low-income black and Hispanic families who rely on them as alternatives to failing and often unsafe neighborhood schools.
The CTU has driven CPS' decline
Chicago's public education system is deteriorating, and the CTU's leadership bears significant responsibility. The shift to militant strategies since 2010 — and most damagingly, the union's insistence on prolonged pandemic school closures — accelerated a decline in educational standards from which Chicago's students have yet to recover. Learning loss from those closures has been severe and lasting, as has the dramatic increase in truancy and youth violence.
Chicago consistently leads the nation in murders and non-lethal, school-age youth shootings.
CTU leadership further exacerbates the situation by pushing the district away from any sort of accountability for students, teachers, or schools. The district covers up its failures by “socially promoting” unprepared children to the next grade level through its adoption of a softer assessment system that minimizes test results for students, teachers, and their schools. The attack on selective enrollment schools is a part of that effort to de-emphasize testing.
The sustainable community schools record: Failure by any honest measure
The CTU's most recent contract with CPS calls for the addition of 50 new "Sustainable Community Schools," expanding what the CTU originally sought as 180 such schools. The union envisions these as community hubs offering wraparound services for students and families. There are currently 36 such schools in the program, including eight high schools operating under the model since 2018.
The record speaks for itself. According to an Illinois Policy Institute analysis of 2024 Illinois Report Card data, 19 of the 20 schools then in the program had lower proficiency rates than the district. Every sustainable community high school performed below the district average in both reading and math. Fewer than one in 10 juniors at Chicago's sustainable community high schools could read or do math at grade level in 2024. In two of these high schools, not a single 11th-grader performed math proficiently. Furthermore, over 70 percent of high school students are considered truant.
The enrollment numbers are equally damning. The 20 pilot schools have lost 15 percent of their student enrollment since 2018, and half a dozen have shed more than a quarter of their students — a far sharper decline than the district overall experienced. These outcomes come at a higher per-pupil cost: on average, CPS sustainable community schools spend nearly $2,000 more per student than other traditional public schools, and nearly $4,500 more than selective enrollment schools. There are also serious questions about where SCS dollars are going to reward allies.
The CTU's community schools model is about funneling more resources to failing schools to protect union membership rolls and starving out independent charter and magnet schools — institutions whose results present an embarrassing contrast to the neighborhood schools the CTU controls. There is no evidence the additional funding is having a positive impact, while in many cases some of the additional funding is being used to reward CTU community and even school board allies.
A proven alternative: Innovation and Renaissance schools
A far better model for improving and sustaining community schools can be found in the "renaissance" or "innovation" schools model, which has demonstrated real success in cities including Camden, Denver, Indianapolis, and New Orleans. These schools are liberated from the district funding constraints, bureaucratic regulations, and collective bargaining restrictions that hinder school effectiveness. All showed significant academic improvement and enrollment stabilization or increases.
It’s about giving local school leadership the autonomy over local school finances and day-to-day operations. This includes staff hiring and firing, curriculum and instructional models, budget control, the school calendar and schedule, and teacher development. They remain subject to state and federal laws on civil rights, health, and safety, and must meet district performance benchmarks. Critically, they remain neighborhood schools — existing students benefit from improved school models, there is no displacement, and schools admit outside students only when surplus seats exist.
Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans public schools ranked among the worst in the nation. More than 60 percent were labeled failing, with abysmal test scores, low graduation rates, widespread corruption, and financial mismanagement. Today, there are no failing schools operating, and the district's overall score according to the state is a B. This comes despite the Cowen Institute at Tulane University reporting New Orleans' per-student funding is in the $15,000 to $16,000 range — half of what Chicago Public Schools spends.
Schools don’t have to be public charters to provide their local leadership with the full autonomy to innovate — designing schools and making decisions that benefit the children. Autonomous schools, whether traditional or public charter, are characterized by an extended school day and school year that are both significantly longer, with priority placed on additional instructional time and expanded academic and behavioral interventions. Many schools choose to offer their own magnet-type programs — International Baccalaureate, Math-Science Academies, and World Language programs — tailored to the community.
The academic gains and enrollment growth in these school models show what can be achieved when families have public school choice: schools must compete for students, local school leaders have the freedom to select the best school models, and the money follows the children. Not one of these characteristics is present in the current CTU sustainable community schools model.
Each of these things will be opposed by the teachers union-backed mayor and its school board majority — until the next election.
