March 29, 2013 Increasing Interest In Academic Centers Makes Scores Jump And Squeezes Higher Tier Students Chicago, IL – In the latest round of Academic Center admissions, composite scores rose at all of the competitive Academic Centers and huge gaps between the scores of admitted Tier 4 and Tier 1 students persisted and widened at […]

February 26, 2013 Selective Enrollment Admissions Scores Soften As Seats Are Added – But Higher Tier Students Still Feel The Squeeze Chicago, IL – Average admissions scores declined across the board as nearly 400 seats were added to Selective Enrollment High Schools. Scores fell very slightly at the top schools (Northside, Payton and Young), a […]

December 4, 2012 Chicago, IL –Many schools, administrators and parents across Chicago take pride in the high percentages of their students that “meet” or “exceed” ISAT standards. However, changes will occur in 2013 that are expected to dramatically lower these percentages by 30% or more. As part of its deal to receive a waiver from […]

November 15, 2012 Chicago, IL –Even though CPS just made a major change to its Tier system in February 2012, this past Friday the Tier system was revised yet again. The most recent changes were made without any explanation. It’s not clear why these changes were made, whether any new data was available, or whether […]

March 15, 2012 Under the current admissions system for Chicago’s Selective Enrollment High Schools and Academic Centers, it is much more difficult for a qualified Tier 4 student to land a spot than it is for a qualified Tier 1 student, for one simple reason – there are many more qualified Tier 4 students than […]

November 1, 2012 by Matthew Greenberg Jones College Prep’s long awaited 100 million dollar plus multi-year expansion effort is finally at an end, enabling the school to add 300 additional seats in this year’s admissions cycle. However, these spots will not be given to high caliber students across the City of Chicago – but to […]

August 20, 2012 by Matthew Greenberg and Jonina Lerner In designing its socioeconomic diversity policy, CPS decided to use a 6 factor model – income and 5 other factors — to measure the socioeconomic status of each student. This paper explores the effects of these non-income factors on the Tier system. We sorted all of […]