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 […]

March 30, 2012 Additional Seats And Declining Scores From Lower Tier Students Flatten Competitive Academic Center Admissions Results Chicago, IL – Average Academic Center admissions scores flattened as seats were added at the more competitive schools and scores required from lower Tier students plummeted. The total number of offers at Lane Tech jumped by a […]

March 3, 2012 Chicago, IL – This year was a brutal season for admissions to a Selective Enrollment High School. The level of competition increased dramatically – for nearly all students. Lane Tech, the largest school in the Selective Enrollment system with about 40% of total seats, saw its average admissions scores increase an eye-popping […]

February 7, 2012 Northside Students Big Losers, South And West Side Students Big Winners As CPS Revises Its Tier Data Getting into a top Selective Enrollment High School or Elementary School has just gotten a lot tougher for some students and a lot easier for others. Last week CPS revised the data driving its Tier […]

Spots at Whitney Young’s Academic Center, the top ranked middle school in the State of Illinois, have always been difficult to get. This year the average admissions score of an admitted Whitney Young Tier 4 student was 846, while the average score of an admitted Tier 1 student was 796 — a difference of 50 […]

At a time when attaining high levels of mathematical fluency has become critical to academic and career success, Illinois is close to the bottom in setting goals for math knowledge. While the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) performance of Chicago Public School (CPS) students has climbed dramatically over the past several years, actual math aptitude […]

This year average admissions scores at nearly all Selective Enrollment High Schools declined– and some fell dramatically. Lane Tech, Young, Payton, and Northside saw declines of 12, 10, 8 and 6 points respectively. This decline comes after years of successive and often significant point increases. This decrease in scores was precipitated by a change in CPS’ admissions […]

Breaking news… For the past two years, Lane Tech Principal LoBosco has led an effort to open an Academic Center at her school. Academic Centers are schools within high schools that serve academically advanced 7th and 8th graders. These students not only learn at an accelerated pace, but they are also guaranteed a spot in […]