PROMOTIONPARTIES &PROMOTIONSALLIANCE FOR THE GREAT LAKES’
2019 GREAT BLUE BENEFIT
Alliance for the Great Lakes hosted the
Great Blue Benefit, sponsored by Chicago
magazine, at Columbia Yacht Club on
June 20, 2019. Proceeds protect the
Great Lakes for the people who drink from
them, swim in their waters, and sit on their
shores. greatlakes.org/get-involved/
great-blue-benefit/JDRF REAL ESTATE GAMES CHICAGOThe JDRF Real Estate Games on May 16, 2019 was
a day of fun and competitive games, supporting
JDRF’s mission to cure, prevent and treat type 1
diabetes (T1D). Sponsored by Chicago magazine,
14 Chicago real estate companies came together
to raise over $245,000 for T1D research that
will make a significant impact on the millions of
Americans who are affected by diabetes every day.
jdrf.org/illinois/events/realestategameschicago/Real Estate Teams competing in cup stacking at the 2019
JDRF Real Estate Games.Alliance for the Great Lakes President & CEO Joel
Brammeier celebrates with fellow Great Lakes
supporters at the Great Blue Benefit.PHOTOGRAPHY: (ALLIANCE FOR THE GREAT LAKES) JILL TIONGCO PHOTOGRAPHY; (JDRF) KACIE HERBSTSEPTEMBER 2019 | CHICAGO 135
recent Stanford University professor’s
analysis of Chicago schools showed that
the students in the district are growing
ac adem ic a l ly at a f a s ter r ate t h a n t hose of
96 percent of the public school districts
in the country.
But in a district tasked with educating
361,000 students — 89 percent of whom are
minorities and 77 percent low income — in
one of the most segregated cities in the
country, rankings and performance mea-
sures tell only part of the story.
SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, JACKSON PAID A
visit to her friend Lakesha Wilson-Hill
in London, where she had gotten a job in
an accounting firm. One night, Wilson-
Hill invited Jackson to a dinner with
two other African American women.
Jackson remembers the evening as a
pivotal moment in her understanding
of the district she would one day lead.
“This one woman was going on and on
about how terrible her experiences in
Chicago schools had been,” says Jackson.
“It turned out she had gone to the same
school as me. I was in the magnet track
and she had been in another track. I
hadn’t realized that there could be such
disparity in the same system.”
Test-in selective enrollment schools,
and selective enrollment and magnet
programs within neighborhood schools,
have been a hallmark of CPS for years.
By imposing income-tiered quotas for
magnets and by allowing students to
travel to schools outside their own
area, CPS has tried to equalize access
to the best schools. But those same tac-
tics, combined with the proliferation of
charter schools, have had the effect of
weakening the open-to-all neighbor-
hood schools that are supposed to be
the bedrock of the district. Today less
than half of CPS students attend their
own neighborhood school.
What’s more, according to a recent
interview on the education news
site Chalkbeat with Kate Phillippo, a
researcher in urban education policy
at Loyola University Chicago, students
from more affluent families get into
their preferred schools far more often