State education funding in Illinois
Illinois is not a poor state
We have the 5th highest gross state product in the nation. How can a state with this much wealth be last in what we contribute to education funding?
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Facts about school vouchers
The pro-voucher position believes that schools should compete for students or risk going out of business. This may work for markets, but it has no place in education as those that support it do not factor in that it is highly disruptive to formative education to regularly switch (choose) a new school.
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RYH new Infographic on Subpar Clinician Positions at CPS
Click here to download the infographic as a PDF
Handouts from our Special Education Forum, October 25, 2016
Thank you to our volunteer parents who planned our wonderful forum and who prepared these excellent handouts and advocacy tools!
Thanks, too, to all of the parents, teachers, and principals who joined us tonight.
We will post a link to this page in our Special Education Toolkit for Parents which you can find here.
We were live tweeting as were a few others. See the Storify of the event here.
***In preparing for our November 16, 2017 Special Education in CPS Public Forum (more info on that here) we noticed that 2 links below are broken. You can find File D here and File E here. These documents as well as the ones below will be updated and distributed at our upcoming forum. We will post them on our website when they are ready.
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Comments on CPS Draft Guidelines for School Actions 2016-17 and CPS Draft 10 Year Master Facilities Plan Update
Remarks as prepared for the October 21, 2016 Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force (CEFTF) general meeting and school actions committee meeting, presented by Jennie Biggs on behalf of Raise Your Hand.
Comments on CPS Draft Guidelines for School Actions 2016-17
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Steep enrollment drops at receiving schools since 2013 mass school closings
In 2013, the Chicago Board of Education voted to close 49 elementary schools and reassign their students to receiving schools. Despite reported capital investment in receiving schools, enrollment dropped at a much steeper rate at these schools than other elementary schools.
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RYH Comments on Draft Illinois ESSA Plan
Chris Ball, CPS Parent and Raise Your Hand board member, and Cassie Creswell, Raise Your Hand Action Co-Director and board member, collaborated and submitted these comments on the Draft Illinois ESSA Plan. We are very grateful for their work.
The comments are below. To view the statement with references, please go here.
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Nearly 13,000 Empty Seats in Chicago Charter Schools – Increase of more than 1,000 Since 2014
Raise Your Hand Calls on CPS to Stop Irresponsible School Expansions During Fiscal Crisis and Lowest Enrollment in Decades
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Map of charters opened last year and impact on budgets at nearby schools
View an interactive map of where charter schools opened last year in Chicago, and the negative impact it had on neighborhood high schools.
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Special Education Cuts
In analyzing the special education "All Means All" pilot program, RYH found that all means less for many students at these schools. 84% of All Means All schools ended up cutting special ed positions.
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