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My 4th-grader is at Chicago World Language Academy (formerly Andrew Jackson Language Academy) and she’s doing great. However, the way I see it is she’s just a big fish in a small pond right now because I don’t think her school is academically challenging. Our concern is that once she’s at the age for testing into academic centers and/or high school, she may not be well prepared for it. This is not a knock at my daughter’s abilities or intelligence, but rather a reality I’ve heard from other parents’ experiences.
Bottom line, WHAT IF she doesn’t get into one of the good schools (Walter Payton, WYHS, Jones, etc.)? The nagging question is if we should just move to the suburbs or stay put and supplement her with enrichment classes. I don’t really have insight into how a suburban school is like at a 5th or 6th-grade level. Is it truly so much better than a decent CPS school to warrant a move? We have always wanted to raise our child in the city, but as a parent, I am constantly worried about the WHAT IFs. I want to continue to support CPS, but the current quality seems to have suffered in the past 5 or 6 years.
Any advice from anyone who’s ever thought of moving to the burbs but decided to stay? What made you stay? Or those who never even thought about it, why?
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Full disclosure, my daughter isn’t in school yet BUT I grew up in the suburbs, as well as worked in the Hinsdale middle school district at the start of my career, not as a teacher but I got a lot of insight, and my instinct is a pretty strong “it depends”.
Your highest ranked suburban schools are going to be better than most CPS schools but your highest ranked CPS schools are going to be better than most suburban schools.
Just like not all CPS schools are equal, neither are all the burbs. Some districts are amazing and some are mediocre at best.
I think your best bet would be to take a look at The Illinois Report Card website and compare your local neighborhood schools, as well as selective enrollment schools you think your child has a chance at getting into, and compare them to school districts in the burbs you would consider moving to.
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Top students at Jackson A should have no problem getting into those high schools. Academic centers are harder to predict. Anyway, you won’t gain much academic-wise by moving to a suburban public school, so it’s basically up to other considerations. Meanwhile, supplementing can make a big difference.
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I grew up in the west burbs and am weighing the same issues. Agree with previous post that the top group of CPS schools – magnets, neighborhood schools and the SEES – are up there with, or better than the good surburban districts when comparing academics.
In the burbs, at least when I was there, they had a lot of ‘tracking’ or ‘levels’ of classes going on, especially from grade 6 and up. Typical middle school experience is very different from the city. In the burbs, many elementaries [4-6 typically] feed into one “middle school” or “jr high” so they have the volume of kids necessary to not only offer more subjects, but to have different levels [ie pre algebra, algebra, etc]. In city, there are only 1-2 classes of 7-8th graders in most schools. Therefore, it is a local school experience, not a ‘big school’ where you switch classes all day long, unless you go to an Academic Center. Many of the suburban jr highs and high schools also have a large amount of resources, sports, extra curriculars, theater, music, etc. in comparison to the city K-8 schools, and they may be of higher quality again, using the ‘economy of scale’ that they feed several elemantary schools into one. They also can be more competitive to ‘make the team’ in a certain sport as there are only so many spots.
The whole the experience of CPS vs burbs is something each family has to weigh for themselves. If you don’t like uncertainty, or have multiple kids to be concerned with, CPS is a difficult place to be. One good bit of advice I got about CPS is to ‘take it a year at a time’. Many magnet families don’t do the AC, stay til grade 8 and then go for high school admission. For high school, the city has many choices beyond SEHS so families that are set on staying in the city will reasearch many options for high school [other public ones, charter, private] and that is the backup plan. As far as ‘moving to the burbs’ with kids who were raised in CPS – I think it’d be important for any parent to advocate for their kid during that transition to make sure the new school gets them placed where they should be.
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I am a CPS high school teacher and parent. I am teaching at a non selective enrollment high school and my daughter is in a neighborhood CPS elementary. My daughter was a very good reading level. I wish there was a stronger math foundation but I feel this problem happens across the country.
In big neighborhood high schools in Chicago students have a lot of AP/IB options. Students that want to challenge themselves have a lot o opportunities to do so. I don’t think there is a big difference between an AP students in neighborhood schools and selective enrollment. The difference is the amount of students that take those classes.
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I hope the original poster from 2021 made it to the suburbs. CPS has been and will continue to be constant infighting, distraction, and underfunding.
Our kids attended Skinner North (top elementary in Chicago) and had a great experience but the school building is meh and the art, music and language programs are underwhelming. The SN kids were academically strong and many were truly exceptional but there’s a limit to the learning ceiling when there aren’t enough teachers or adults to facilitate learning.
The top CPS high schools (Payton, WY, Northside, Lane, Jones) are great but what I learned is that the stratification based on city tiers (where you live) is so great, that most of the students aren’t actually top students. There is a very wide range of admissions test scores because CPS forces equal allocation of students from each tier. WY has good facilities but that just means on par with good suburban schools. But otherwise resources will always feel a bit lacking at CPS.
In hindsight, I think CPS is still the best place to challenge your child if they are top 10-20% academically. Otherwise the kids are better off at a good suburban high school (if they can afford it after the covid price spike) where they can also take higher level classes if needed but also be in an environment with better funding and support.
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Just to be clear, I meant top 10-20% at the selective enrollment high schools, not top 10-20% of CPS
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Thanks for sharing your perspective as a SN parent! We toured last fall, and the vibes were strange – the performance is there for sure, but the people who gave us the tour didn’t seem particularly invested. And, then, of course, there’s the ever-present CPS shrug toward “this used to be the library” or “we’re down half of our art programs and not sure what we’ll have next year.”
We have one kid headed to Payton and another to Edison in a couple of weeks, and I’m curious to see how it goes. The ‘burbs were plan A for us, but of course plan A doesn’t always pan out! I have full confidence they’ll be challenged and well cared for academically, but I admit I still get occasional suburban school envy at all the different programs and opportunities kids have. Our kids are 4 years apart, so if we find out it’s not what we’d hoped, then we can try something different down the road.
Also, I see exactly what you mean about some of the best schools in the city being on par with good suburban schools. WY and Lane in particular gave me that impression and opened my eyes to the fact that in the city you have to be academically competitive at an SE school to get the equivalent high school experience and opportunity you’d get in the suburbs.
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My kids went to SN (K-4) and we are just transferring to a private school for some personal reasons. We LOVE all the teachers we had in all the grades we had. They truly are passionate about teaching and the kids, many of them go above and beyond to enrich the learning experience.
Skinner North does have a dedicated library space. Maybe during your tour it was under renovation (it was being renovated for a short period of time I think). When I toured the schools before the pandemic the auditorium was really falling apart, but when we started they have renovated the auditorium and so it was much nicer.
My kids are lucky that they got friendly and hardworking classmates. I’m very satisfied with all the curriculum at SN except math, where even after differentiation it’s not enough. But the strength of their classmates made up for some of that.
Though I have to say that if you look at the strong math competition results of SN (like CJML), it’s not due to SN math coach, but what the kids are being supplemented outside of school.
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I admit that we went on a lot of tours last fall, and I must have gotten Skinner mixed up with another school on the library detail! I am pretty sure that on the SN tour there was reference to an arts program being cut and uncertainty about the future of some of the others. As for the rest, I realize it’s possible our tour (or the tour in general this year) was just an “off” year, as I’ve heard so much good about SN from parents on this forum and elsewhere – and if we’d gotten an offer there we certainly would have accepted it and tried it out!
That being said, on every elementary tour we’ve been on and in every school we’ve talked to friends about, we’ve heard some version of the same story: offerings being cut in recent years. My child at Payton just came back from orientation with the news that mixed media art classes were cut for freshman over the summer.
No doubt, these are still excellent schools where our kids will be well cared for and receive a great education. Academically, these schools will likely remain at the top of the ratings. But it’s disappointing that even in CPS’ “best,” programs and services are routinely being cut. I know that many school systems experience funding problems and have to make hard decisions. But CPS is one of the largest school systems in the nation, so we’ll experience downsides and compromises others don’t (just like we get to benefit from some amazing opportunities others don’t). Even though we’ve made our decision and we’re excited about this school year, sometimes I still question what’s best between going to a top CPS school or having the experience of a strong suburban school with good academics but more overall opportunity with varied experiences & programs.
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It’s pretty easy actually. Top CPS high schools offer a high concentration of the top students in a big city. This is a true rarity in this country, so if you are top students, say a former academic center student at these high schools, it is a great place to unlock your potential. These schools have amazing high expectations and classmates that push each other to improve. But for everyone else you may be better off as a top student in the burbs (instead of mediocre at WY or Payton) while also enjoying better facilities.
Good facilities aren’t common but I’ve seen enough schools around the country to know they’re also not rare either especially in the burbs.
It comes down to knowing your kid, which isn’t easy but gets easier as they get older. Of course other stuff like social emotional health and stress etc play into this too but that comes back to knowing your kid.
Good luck to those facing this decision!
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SEHS are a great place for unlocking academic potential – no doubt about that. However, there’s less opportunity to spread out and explore different electives at a school like Payton or Northside vs. WY or Lane and that’s also a type of opportunity, especially when you’re a teenager (regardless of how academically inclined you are).
I’m SO excited for my kid to go to Payton and it’s the right fit for him. But we also thought that if Lane started looking like the best path, we’d start exploring suburbs with similar school offerings but different life tradeoffs.
I think a lot of it comes down to your student but also to your potential other opportunities and where you’d move to the burbs if you did. Not everyone has the option of good suburban schools vs. the best city schools.
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