During the uproar over school closings, CPS officials repeatedly promised that students would end up at better schools and poured millions into “welcoming schools” to improve them. Now, with the revelation that only 60 percent of displaced students enrolled in their designated welcoming school, the academic performance at the schools where they landed becomes an important X-factor, made even more critical by the fact that the Consortium on Chicago School Research has found that closings are only beneficial if students end up in the top-performing schools.
Most of the shuttered schools—80 percent—were rated Level 3, the lowest rating CPS now hands out. A Catalyst Chicago analysis of CPS data found that, in one sense, there’s good news: Overall, just over half of students who went to their welcoming school ended up at schools that were rated Level 1 or 2...