Seventh graders in Chicago who want to get into a selective enrollment high school have to take a test to determine their academic eligibility, and until this year, that test has been the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, or ISAT. But this year, schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett changed that eligibility test to the MAP test, the Chicago Tribune reports.
That’s not a problem for Chicago Public Schools students, since the test will be administered during the normal school day this May. For students at nonpublic schools, however, including several Catholic K-8 schools in the city, it has caused a bit of a conflict, since Catholic schools do not normally administer the NWEA MAP test.
The “NWEA MAP” acronym stands for a test manufactured by the Northwest Evaluation Association known as the Measures of Academic Progress test.
“It is troubling in the extreme to see CPS embark upon a course that will harm the very children it otherwise shoulders a responsibility to educate,” the Tribune quoted Sister Mary Paul McCaughey, head of Catholic schools for Chicago, as saying in a strongly worded letter. “Under the banner of neutrality, CPS has put a heavy thumb on the side of the scale favoring public school students over nonpublic school students. This is wrong.”
The school board is aware of the issue—which requires Catholic schoolkids who want to attend a selective enrollment high school to take the test during two Saturday sessions at a CPS school—but has not made any decisions as to how it should be handled.
“The denial of access and discrimination are blatant and appear designed to single out nonpublic students who may wish to attend a selective enrollment school,” Ms McCaughey wrote.
In terms of how the board might ease the discrimination against nonpublic K-8 students, Ms McCaughey suggested:
- Waiving the NWEA MAP requirement for a year
- Having CPS pay to administer the test at nonpublic schools
