Chicago School Firings Not Race Motivated, Study Says

Chicago’s ambitious school reform process, which handed control of each school to a local elected council, became quickly mired in controversy last month when protests erupted at a number of schools over the dismissal of principals.

Like nearly every aspect of social policy in Chicago, race was at the center of the conflict. United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), a politically ambitious Mexican-American group, was accused of engineering the firing of white principals at Latino schools.

A new study released Tuesday, however, shows that race and ethnicity apparently did not play a significant role overall in the firings of principals. “Given the long history of racially based living and voting patterns in Chicago, this is remarkable,” observes the study, which was commissioned by Designs for Change, a children’s advocacy group that helped develop the reform legislation.

In addition, the study says that a much smaller percentage of Latino principals were retained than white or black principals and that Latinos are “dramatically” underrepresented in the educational system.

The Chicago school system, called “the worst in the nation” by former U.S. Education Secretary William J. Bennett in 1987, embarked on its experimental school reform process last year. The schools here are considered so bad that even the city’s deputy mayor for education sends her eldest child to a private suburban school. She told a local newspaper Monday that city schools are not “good enough.”

Under the city’s school reform plan, elected councils at each school have authority to hire and fire principals. By the time all of the city’s 540 school councils complete their reviews by April of next year, as many as half of the city’s principals will have left, either by retirement, resignation or dismissal, the study estimates.

Students, parents and teachers at several schools marched and protested late last month to protest the firings of principals. Some charged that the firings were racially motivated. At one high school the protest turned violent and nine students were arrested.

“We have not detected any systematic process of (local school councils) choosing principals based on race,” said Joan Jeter Slay, Design for Change’s director of public policy and a member of the systemwide school board.

She said it was disturbing, though, that only 50% of Latino principals that came up for review so far have been retained compared with 82% overall.

“We are very much concerned because Hispanic principals are dramatically underrepresented in the system already and now they have not been retained at high levels when compared with white and black principals,” said Donald R. Moore, executive director of the organization.

Before the reform plan was instituted, principals in Chicago served four years on an interim basis and then received lifetime tenure. The study showed that interim principals of any race were more likely to be dismissed than tenured ones. Since 81% of the the Latinos up for review were interim principals, Moore said this partially accounts for the higher number of them being dismissed.

The school reform study was released on the same day that several aldermen called for the dismissal of the city’s deputy mayor of education after she told the Chicago Sun-Times that she did not want her eldest daughter to attend a Chicago public high school. “I am the deputy mayor of education in Chicago,” Lourdes Monteagudo said, “but I am also a mother of three children.”

Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose own children attend private school, came to her support.