More Justification for Tuition Vouchers

The latest ACT college admission scores were released and, once again, the Chicago Public School results are still embarrassingly pathetic, even though they increased 0.03% from last year to an average score of 17.3. But the students who attend schools run by the Archdiocese of Chicago scored on average 22.8 on the test or 30% better than CPS students. Does that mean Catholics are smarter or do they just know how to educate better? The answer is obvious!


On July 30th, I posted a blog, “The Test Scores Are Still Failing Numbers,” where I castigated Mayor Daley for touting high school ACT test numbers that, while rising, are still pathetic. I wrote, “With the exception of community colleges, a student cannot expect to gain entrance to an institution of higher education with an American College Testing (ACT) score lower than 20; that means that 75.6% of CPS students do not have scores high enough to attend and succeed in college.”

What is the excuse this time that CPS has for public school students scoring at a much lower level than parochial students? They seem to be going with the theory advanced by the Sun-Times, “More than 85 percent of the CPS test-takers qualified for free or reduced lunch, while only 17 percent of archdiocesan test-takers did so.”


What does qualifying for free lunch program have to do with anything? If CPS is blaming low ACT scores on the fact that their students are hungry, that is incorrect because the students get free food at school, so their belly’s should be full. What does food have to do with it?

As President Harry Truman said, "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em."

It has been 15 years since Mayor Daley took control of CPS and the performance of the students is as miserable now as it was then. While many beautiful magnet schools have been built, what has been accomplished to help the average student? Nothing, as the test scores once again prove.


I also wrote on July 30th, “As Reverend Meeks has said about the Mayor,'Public schools is not his expertise. It's just not. You could be passionate about something but it doesn't mean you're good at it.' Meeks, a product of Harper High school in Chicago, might exhibit bad grammar in his speech, but what he said is correct. “

I pontificated in July that the Mayor’s grade for what he has done to bolster the educational system in Chicago would be a big, fat F. Whoever the next Mayor puts in charge of CPS can only do better, but let’s hope that that is more than 0.03% better. Maybe the new Mayor should look to God for guidance in his choice.