3-in-10 Chicago public school teachers send their children to private school

Nearly 31% of public school teachers in Chicago send at least one of their children to private school, according to federal data.

The leader of the Chicago Teachers Union sends her oldest child to a private school, too.

The fact that so many public schools teachers are choosing private schools for their children is according to an original analysis of data from the 2018-2022 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample, compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.

What does it mean for a city if 3-in-10 of its public school teachers choose to pay for private school rather than send their child to a public school like where they teach? It could mean these children need something different from the public school model. It could also mean teachers in the system know firsthand the school system is failing its students, and they want better for their own children.

The stats show why so many of Chicago’s public school teachers have put their children in private schools: just 1-in-4 Chicago Public Schools students in third through eighth grade could read at grade level in 2023; by 11th grade even fewer students could meet grade-level reading standards.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates chose to send her son to private school so he “could live out his dream of being a soccer player while also having a curriculum that can meet his social and emotional needs.” She failed to find those things in CPS where her members teach, so she did what any good parent would do and found him a better fitting school.

That is, she did what any parent making at least $289,000 a year would be able to do. She left less-well-off families out in the cold by leading CTU’s fight to kill the state program that allowed nearly 15,000 low-income students to make that same choice to attend a private school.

Everyone should have a choice when it comes to education, but many low-income Chicago families can’t afford the choice like Davis Gates and so many of Chicago’s teachers. Teachers union leaders and public school teachers understand the importance of being able to choose private schools for their children, so why would CTU fight so hard to deny that option to low-income families who most need the help and are often least able to escape the worst schools?

Those nearly 15,000 low-income students across Illinois, many of whom lived in Chicago, received scholarships to attend private school through the Invest in Kids Tax-Credit Scholarship Program last school year. Invest in Kids was the only private school choice program in Illinois, and CTU leadership led the political effort to kill it.

Most of the families receiving scholarships earned less than $49,025 per year and couldn’t otherwise afford a private school education for their children. That’s why Invest in Kids was so important.

Research from the Fordham Institute in 2004 found urban public school teachers who earned lower incomes chose to send their children to private schools at a greater rate than urban families who earned similar incomes but were not public school teachers.

“Perhaps that’s not surprising: especially among relatively low-income families, urban teachers are unusually well educated and especially apt to value education,” wrote the study’s authors. “Still, it’s noteworthy that, even when the financial sacrifice required for private education is greater, urban public school teachers still choose private schools for their children at higher rates than urban families with similar incomes.”

A recent poll showed Chicagoans and CPS parents are concerned about “students not learning enough academically” in CPS: only 3% of Chicagoans think CPS deserves a grade of A. That 31% of Chicago public school teachers who won’t send their kids to Chicago’s public schools is a vote of no confidence from the people who know the system best.

Ultimately the system needs to be fixed. School choice is part of that fix and can rapidly help the neediest students.

By policy analyst Hannah Schmid and data scientist Jon Josko