Education and Race: Illinois
Illinois
?
?“The impact of slavery in Illinois has to be seen as a much bigger issue than just the number of enslaved Africans who lived and worked in Illinois . . . It’s clear to me that part of the contemporary trouble we’re having with worsening race relations . . . have to do with whether or not people fundamentally believe that human beings are equal.”[i] Ronald Bailey, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
?
There were enslaved Africans in the area that became the state of Illinois from the early eighteenth century, used by European immigrants in lead mining in the southern part of the state and in small-scale agriculture and domestic service there and elsewhere in the area. The Illinois country had been the granary of French Louisiana, with much of that food raised with enslaved labor, primarily people kidnapped and trafficked from Senegal and neighboring areas in West Africa. Conditions of enslaved people under French rule were governed by the Code Noir, which listed in 60 articles the rights and obligations of enslaved Africans, their descendants, and the slave holders themselves.[ii] This was in contrast to the conditions in the southern areas of what became the United States, where relations between enslaved people and those who held them were essentially unregulated. Although slavery was outlawed in the region when the Illinois area became part of the U.S. Northwest Territory in 1787, the federal law was ignored in practice.
?
The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed slavery in Missouri, prohibited it elsewhere in the Mississippi Valley.? Nonetheless, by 1845, there were 5,000 enslaved people in what was by then the state of Illinois. “Black Codes,” in the state law “prevented [free] blacks from being in Illinois for more than ten days, or else they could be arrested, fined repeatedly and auctioned.
Free blacks and their children had to show certificates of freedom and register with the county shortly after their arrival in Illinois. “Slaves or servants” had to have written permission to travel more than ten miles from their master’s homestead or risk whipping. Blacks couldn’t gather in groups of three or more to dance or make “revelry,” or they could be lashed. And, to perpetuate their enslavement, blacks couldn’t vote or testify in court.[iii] ?
Slavery gradually ebbed away in Illinois, as slave-holding itself increasingly served merely as a badge of White status.? It was banned in Illinois by the state’s 1848 constitution but did not finally come to an end until national emancipation in 1865. Today it takes other forms, some as deadly.
?
Racism, manifesting as subordination and segregation of Black residents of Illinois, continues.? Its most virulent form, lynchings, were common in the state between the Civil War and World War II.[iv]
?
????????? ????????? *
?
Illinois has a population of 12,582,032, of whom 7,356,301 are White, non-Hispanic. The Black population of Illinois went from under two percent of the total before the Great Migration to 14% (1,660,423) today, over half of whom, 770,000, live in Chicago.? Illinois is an inequitable state, both in general and specifically in regard to its Black population.? The share of aggregate household income of the richest five percent of Illinois households is eight times that of the most impoverished twenty percent of households by income. The median household income for Black residents of Illinois is $45,000. The White median household income in Illinois is $83,300. Forty-one percent of White adults in Illinois have attained a Bachelor’s degree or above.? Twenty-four percent of Black adults in Illinois have attained that education level. It goes without saying, but it is necessary to say the obvious:? these are life-changing income and education gaps. Black residents of Illinois might as well be living in a different country from their White neighbors, although, of course, few have White neighbors.
?
????????? ????????? *
?
Education
The high school graduation rate of White students in Illinois is 90.7%, that of Black students 80.1%. While 45.9% of White students in Illinois are judged by the state to be proficient in English Language Arts, just 16.1% of Black students were judged to have been taught proficiency in English Language Arts. The implication is that sixty percent of Black students receiving Illinois high school diplomas (and 45% of the White students) cannot read or write well.
?
Perhaps “proficiency” is too high a bar.[1]? On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2022 eighth grade Reading Assessment, 58% of students from families with lower incomes, qualifying them for the National School Lunch Program, were found to have been taught reading to the Basic eighth grade level or above.? This compares to 83% of students from higher income families, those not qualified for the National School Lunch Program: a 25 percentage-point income achievement gap.
?
Family income in Illinois is a strong predictor of how well students are taught to read in the state.
?
Just over half the eighth grade students in Illinois—52%—who reported that their parental education level was only “graduated high school” were found to have reached the Basic level in reading. Among students who reported that their parental education level was at least a Bachelor’s degree, 81% were found by NAEP to have been taught reading to the Basic level or above: a 29 percentage-point gap based on parental education attainment.
?
Parental educational attainment in Illinois is a strong predictor of how well students are taught to read.
?
Combining family income data with parental education attainment, which might stand as a proxy for class itself, NAEP found that less than half—48%—of Illinois students in eighth grade from lower income families with parental education attainment limited to a high school diploma had been taught reading to the Basic level or above.? Sixty-six percent of students from lower income families whose parental education attainment was at least a Bachelor’s degree were taught to the Basic level or above in reading. Among eighth grade students from higher income families, 63% whose parental educational attainment was just a high school diploma were taught reading to at least the Basic level, as were 87% from higher income families with a parental educational attainment of at least a Bachelor’s degree.
?
Class—combined family income and parental educational attainment—matters for student achievement in Illinois.
?
Race
The percentage of White students in eighth grade in Illinois having been taught reading to the Basic level or above was found by NAEP in 2022 to be 80%.? Just under half of Black students were found to have been taught reading to that grade level indication: a thirty percentage-point racial gap.
?
Most Black middle school students in Illinois are not taught to read well-enough to read their school assignments with sufficient understanding to respond to them.
?
Among eighth grade students eligible for the National School Lunch Program, a remarkable 80% of Black students whose parental educational attainment was only a high school diploma were judged by NAEP in 2022 as not having been taught Basic or better reading skills: they could not read their school work. Among those students from lower income families with college educated parents in Illinois, 79% of White students and 55% of Black students were scored at or above Basic in grade eight reading.
?
Among eighth grade students from higher income families with college educated parents, 87% of White students in Illinois were scored at or above Basic in reading. There was insufficient data for Black students in this category. This seems to imply that all, or nearly all, Black students in Illinois are eligible for the National School Lunch Program: their families are poor.
?
If class and race are associated with these large gaps in student achievement, what does that say about the effectiveness of the schools in Illinois? Schools are meant to reduce this type of inequality, are they not?
?
Which brings us to Chicago.
?
Chicago
?
Chicago, one of the half dozen most important North American cities, has significant economic and cultural assets including financial markets and such traditional virtues as a world-class museum, opera and orchestra; great universities and research centers; active theaters and a strong literary heritage.? Less traditional, but perhaps more influential, are its nightclubs, recording studios and other venues for jazz, the blues and popular music.
?
Chicago was founded too late to have a significant history of slavery, but not too late for racism, which continues to strongly affect its large population of descendants of enslaved Africans.? Chicago’s labor-intensive industries, such as meat-packing, made it a major destination of the first half of the twentieth century’s Great Migration of African-Americans from debt peonage and other forms of bondage in the agricultural southern states, such as Mississippi, Missouri and Louisiana.? The Black population of the city rose from about two percent before the Great Migration to thirty percent today: 800,000 of 2.7 million.?
?
Household incomes in Chicago today are extremely unequal.? The share of the city’s aggregate income going to the 20% of earners with the least incomes is 2%, that taken by the top five percent is 25%.? Chicago is also a racially deeply divided and unequal city. The median Black household income is $37,911; the Black poverty rate is 27%. The median White household income is $95,198; the White poverty rate is 9%. Sixty-five percent of White adult residents of Chicago have attained a Bachelor’s degree, as have 26% of Black adult residents of Chicago.
?
The Black racial penalty for living in Chicago is $37,000 in lower annual household income, eighteen percentage-points on the poverty rate, less than half the educational attainment level of White residents. These are differences of an order established and maintained in some other countries by armed force.
?
The Opportunities Insight group, looking at mobility indicators, finds that Black residents have an income at age 35 of $25,000; in other words, no intergenerational economic mobility. For Black males, their income at age 35 is, on average, $22,000; that is, negative economic mobility. Of course those are city-wide averages.? In the West Town neighborhood, the household income at age 35 for Black residents is a barely credible $13,000.
?
As urban planning experts Marisa Novara and Amy Khare have observed, “Chicago … ranks in the top quarter of all metro areas with regards to economic segregation.
Chicago’s white households are wealthier than the national average, while African-Americans households have substantially less wealth than the national average . . . Historically, the city’s own urban redevelopment and housing policies contributed to the siting of African-Americans in particular areas of the South and West sides . . . housing and mortgage redlining policies kept African-Americans residents confined to the city of Chicago’s lower income neighborhoods, while other policies encouraged white flight, highway expansions, and the growth of the suburbs.[v]
Chicago segregation is not “natural” or a matter of “personal choice.” It has been imposed by specific people—politicians, bankers, government officials—as a clear example, and manifestation, of administrative racism.
?
Chicago Education—or the lack of it.
The Chicago school district enrolled 329,836 students in 2021-2022, of whom 36,081 were White and 118,164 were Black.? It spends $16,418 per student (less than half that of New York City). The student to teacher ratio is 17 to 1; 18 to 1 in the high schools.
?
Chicago’s schools, like its neighborhoods, are extremely segregated, with a segregation index of 0.69. This means that in 2021-22, the average Black student attended a school where the Black population share was nearly 70 percentage-points higher than in the average White student's school. ?By this measure the Chicago maintains the most segregated big city school district in the country. Given that Chicago’s schools are extremely segregated, how well do they—in spite of that—educate the children in their care?? Segregated schools are not necessarily schools that do not educate their students well.? What is the case in Chicago?
?
领英推荐
Cultural Capital: Family Income and Parental Education Attainment
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) divides results by eligibility for the National School Lunch Program as a proxy for household income.? In Chicago in 2022, 43% of those whose family income made them ineligible for the Program, those with higher incomes, reached the Proficient level, while just 19% failed to reach the Basic level. Those students from less prosperous families, eligible for the program, reached Proficiency or above much less than half as often (17%) and were left below Basic more than twice as often (43%). These results are better than the national averages for students from prosperous families and worse for children from families with lower incomes.
?
Half of the students in eighth grade in Chicago’s schools who reported that their parental educational attainment was a high school diploma reached the Basic level or above on the NAEP Reading assessment—and half did not.? Two-thirds (68%) of those who reported their parental educational level as at least a Bachelor’s degree were taught reading to the Basic level or above.
?
Combining income and parental education measures—class—we find that slightly more than half of Chicago’s eighth grade students from families with lower incomes and a parental education level of just high school graduations were scored by NAEP as reading below the Basic level. Sixty percent of those students from lower income families, but with a parental educational attainment of a Bachelor’s degree or above had been taught to read above the Basic level.? Among those students from higher income families, none reported a parental educational attainment below college graduation.? Of those reporting a parental attainment level of at least a college degree, 84% were scored by NAEP as reading above the Basic level.
?
Parental education levels in Chicago matter, but higher parental education levels combined with higher family income matters more.
?
Of the approximately 26,000 eighth grade students in Chicago, 9,300 are classified as Black and 2,600 are classified as White. According to NAEP, slightly more than half, 52%, 4,800, of eighth grade Black students in Chicago have not been taught to read at grade level.? More than three-quarters of White students, 79%--all but 548--were taught to read to the Basic level or above.
?
Given the city’s income disparities, it is not surprising that NAEP did not report any White students in eighth grade in Chicago’s schools who were eligible for the National School Lunch Program (lower family income).? Of those ineligible (higher family incomes) 83% were found to have been taught to read at least to the Basic level. NAEP did not report any Black students in eighth grade in Chicago’s schools who were ineligible for the National School Lunch Program: all their families were poor.? More than half (54%) of Black students from those lower income families were found by NAEP to have not been taught reading to grade level.?
?
NAEP did not report any White students in eighth grade with a parental education level below college graduation.? Among those White students in eighth grade who reported a parental education level of at least a Bachelor’s degree, 85% were taught reading to at least the Basic level and seven percent reached Advanced.? Thirty-two percent of Black students in eighth grade who reported that their parental education attainment was a high school diploma reached the Basic level in reading; slightly more than two-thirds did not. Among Black students in eighth grade who reported parental education attainment as at least a Bachelor’s degree, 55% were found by NAEP to have been taught to read at grade level, a thirty percentage-point racial gap for that educationally privileged group.
?
Combining these indicators, NAEP did not report any White students eligible for the National School Lunch Program who reported a parental education level as just a high school diploma. Among White students from more prosperous families, none were found who reported a parental education level of only a high school diploma. Eighty-eight percent of those reporting a parental educational attainment of at least a Bachelor’s degree were found to have been taught to read at least to grade level.
?
That is, for NAEP’s purposes, all the families of White middle school students in the Chicago school system had higher incomes and higher levels of parental educational attainment and nearly 90% of their children had learned to read at least to the standard for their grade.
?
On the other hand, slightly under one-third (32%) of Black students, eligible for the National School Lunch Program with a parental education level of only a high school diploma were found by NAEP to have been taught to the Basic level and above.? Slightly over half (53%) of Black students from these lower income families who reported a parental educational attainment of at least a Bachelor’s degree were found to have been taught to the Basic level and above.? NAEP reports no data for Black students from more prosperous families regardless of parental educational attainment.
?
That is, for NAEP’s purposes, all the families of Chicago’s Black middle school students are poor and even college educated parents cannot expect much better than even odds that their children will be taught well enough to read their textbooks.
?
What we might call the Black/White “Cultural Capital” gap in Chicago is associated with Reading Assessment differences of approximately at least thirty percentage-points for both family income and parental education. The high amount of cultural capital enjoyed by White students in the Chicago schools goes far toward making up for the deficiencies of those schools, while the schools do nothing effective to make up for the comparative disadvantage of lower cultural capital in the families of Black students.
?
This then follows: The Chicago high school graduation rates are 88.6% for White students; 79% for Black students.[vi] Six-year college completion rates among immediate enrollees were tracked by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research for the class of 2014.? Thirty-one percent of Black women received Bachelor’s degrees and 7.7% received Associate degrees or certificates. Twenty-two percent of Black men received Bachelor’s degrees and 5.4% received Associate degrees or certificates.? This compared with 66.8% of White women receiving Bachelor’s degrees and 8.1% receiving Associates degrees or certificates and 55.1% of White men receiving Bachelor’s degrees and 7.8% receiving Associate degrees or certificates.[vii]?
?
Black male graduates of the Chicago public schools advanced to Bachelor’s degrees at less than half the rate of White male graduates, as Black female graduates advanced to Bachelor’s degrees at half the rate of White female graduates of the Chicago Public Schools.[viii] This is a reflection, perhaps, of the inequalities in the education each groups received from the Chicago Public Schools and, in the case of the White students, the additional family resources devoted to their educations in that radically inequitable city.
?
Such are the results that follow when a district educates most of its White children and others from prosperous families and merely provides free and reduced priced meals to many of its Black children and others from families with lower incomes.
?
??? ? ??????? *
?
?
Raj Chetty and his colleagues wrote eight years ago: “The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment [in Chicago] offered randomly selected families living in high poverty housing projects housing vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods . . .
We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood significantly improves college attendance rates and earnings for children who were young (below age 13) when their families moved. These children also live in better neighborhoods themselves as adults and are less likely to become single parents. The treatment effects are substantial: children whose families take up an experimental voucher to move to a lower-poverty area when they are less than 13 years old have an annual income that is $3,477 (31%) higher on average relative to a mean of $11,270 in the control group in their mid-twenties . . . The findings imply that offering vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods to families with young children who are living in high poverty housing projects may reduce the intergenerational persistence of poverty and ultimately generate positive returns for taxpayers.[ix]
Chetty and his colleagues do not specifically mention the difference in the quality of schools between high poverty and low poverty neighborhoods, but for Chicago, the abysmal quality of the city schools and the relatively higher quality of schools in the surrounding suburbs, is surely contributory to the differences they identify.
?
?
Winnetka
Winnetka is one of those suburbs north of Chicago.? It is 90% White, 0.25% Black, 4% Hispanic and 3.5% Asian. The median income for its White residents is more than $250,000.? The Census has no data for the median income of its few Black residents. Adult educational attainment is 90% Bachelor’s degree or higher.[x]? The median price of a house is $1.1 million. The poverty rate is 2% for its White population.
?
The Winnetka School District (grades k-8) has 1,676 students, with a student-teacher ratio of 8 to 1 (compared to double that in Chicago). Sixty-eight percent of students are found on state tests to be proficient in Mathematics and 62% in Reading. Four-tenths of one percent of the students are eligible for the National School Lunch Program. Four-tenths of one percent of teachers are in their first or second year of teaching.? The average teacher salary is $71,468 (compared to $60,377 in Chicago). Expenditure is $27,000 per student (compared to $16,418 in Chicago).[xi]
?
Students graduating from the Winnetka schools may attend New Trier High School, which also draws students from five other Chicago suburbs.? It has an enrollment of about 3,000 students. The school is 77% White and 0.7% Black. The student teacher ratio is 12 to 1. The average salary of teachers is $110,220, nearly twice that in Chicago. Seven percent of teachers are in their first or second year. The graduation rate is 98%.? Approximately 96% of graduates enroll in college. Mathematics proficiency is 76%. (The state average is 20%.) Reading proficiency is 80% (the state average is 30%). [xii]
?
??? ?? ?????? *
?
It would be fallacious to argue that simply doubling teacher salaries and increasing spending per student by fifty percent would automatically result in improved education for Black students in Chicago’s schools. Nonetheless, it is likely that Black students from Chicago would get better educations in suburbs like Winnetka, in schools like New Trier.? That seems to be what was found by The Moving to Opportunity experiment.? In medical trials, often when one option is found qualitatively better than the others, the trial is stopped and the better option is approved for treatment. In this case, the Moving to Opportunity experiment was abandoned.? It is, of course, impractical to move all the Black students now in the Chicago schools to Winnetka and New Trier.? However, it does not seem that it would be impossible to simply improve the Chicago schools in which Black students are segregated, nor impossible to change the legal and administrative procedures that foster and maintain the current inequities.[xiii]
[1] Or perhaps not: “English Language Arts (ELA) Proficiency is the percentage of students who are proficient (i.e., performance levels 4 [met expectations] and 5 [exceeded expectations] on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, performance levels 3 and 4 on DLM-AA, performance levels 3 and 4 on SAT in the subject area of ELA).” Illinois State Board of Education, Glossary of Terms.
[i] In McAndrew, Tara McClellan. “Illinois Issues: Slave State,” Illinois Public Media, October 21, 2016. ttps://will.illinois.edu/news/story/illinois-issuesslave-state#:~:text=In%201810%2C%20Illinois%20had%20168,it%20be%20a%20free%20state.
[ii] See: Ekberg, Carl J. “Black Slaves in the Illinois Country, 1721-1765,” Proceedings of the Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society: Michigan State University Press, 1987. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45137411?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
[iii] McAndrew, Tara McClellan. “Illinois Issues: Slave State,” Illinois Public Media, October 21, 2016. ttps://will.illinois.edu/news/story/illinois-issuesslave-state#:~:text=In%201810%2C%20Illinois%20had%20168,it%20be%20a%20free%20state. See also: Lehman, Christopher P. Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865: A history of human bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011, pp. 27ff.
[iv] Johnson, Erick. “Illinois experienced more lynchings than most Midwestern states,” The Crusader Newspaper Group, March 1, 2022. https://chicagocrusader.com/illinois-experienced-more-lynchings-than-most-midwestern-states/
[v] Novara, Marisa and Khare, Amy. “Two Extremes of Residential Segregation” Chicago’s separate Worlds & Policy Strategies for Integration,” A Shared Future: Fostering Communities in an Era of Inequality, 2017. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/a_shared_future_two_extremes_residential_segregation.pdf
[vi] Illinois Report Card, 2022-2023. Chicago Public Schools District 299. Graduation Rate. https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/district.aspx?source=trends&source2=graduationrate&Districtid=15016299025
[vii] University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research calculations.
[viii] Mahaffie, S., Malone, M., Usher, A., Mukherjee, D., & Nagaoka, J. (2022).?The educational attainment of Chicago Public Schools students: 2021.?Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.
[ix] Chetty, Raj, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz. “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment,” NBER, August 2015. https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/mto_paper.pdf
[xi] https://www.niche.com/k12/d/winnetka-school-district-no-36-il/; https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=accountability&Districtid=05016036002
#Education #Race #Equity #Racism #Chicago