Struggling Chicago public high schools get millions

• Reprints

Updated: July 5, 2011 11:02AM

Eight poorly performing Chicago public high schools — including a charter school — have been awarded nearly $5.7 million each in federal money to overhaul their programs over the next three years, state officials announced Wednesday.

The decision by the State Board of Education makes North Lawndale Charter High School the first charter school in the state to be tapped for a federal school improvement “intervention’’ grant, state board officials said.

The grants are intended to help those Illinois public schools that are among the state’s 5 percent worst-performing, either due to test scores or graduation rates.

All eight schools picked the least disruptive of four possible federal intervention models. Under “transformation,’’ they can keep their teachers while implementing new research-based instructional programs, beefing up teacher training, improving data collection and working with outside partners.

At North Lawndale’s two charter campuses, some 13.8 percent of last year’s juniors passed their Prairie State Achievement Exams. Other Chicago high schools to win federal improvement grants were Julian (with a 9.8 percent pass rate), Kelvyn Park (13.4 percent), Juarez (17.4 percent), Hancock College Prep (16.6 percent), Tilden (5.7 percent), Richards (5.9 percent) and Wells (8.7 percent).

North Lawndale’s state test pass rate and average ACT score of 16.1 are both below the Chicago Public School average. But its 93 percent attendance rate and 78 percent five-year graduation rate both beat citywide averages.

Of those North Lawndale graduates to go to college, 70 percent have graduated or are on track to do so within six years, said the charter school’s president, John Horan. Those results come even though the school serves an unusually needy population of 95 percent low-income kids, also higher than the city average.

Horan conceded, “It puzzles people — how come your ACT scores aren’t higher?” It may be that the school’s curriculum does not align well with the ACT, Horan said. North Lawndale will use its new federal money to work with the CPS Office of Transformation on better data collection and with John Hersey High in Arlington Heights on improving its curriculum, Horan said.

“Until we are at 18 or 19 [average ACT score], we are not getting the job done. That’s why we are so excited about the extra help,” Horan said.

“If we are not there in two or three years, that’s not good. We misspent that money. If we are there, then this is a very important model.’’