Eduwonkette on the Chicago Public Schools Boycott

In response to Illinois State Senator Meeks leading a boycott of Chicago Public Schools yesterday, Eduwonkette (under guest blogger “skoolboy”) broke down their thoughts on the affair with some interesting data analysis. The data indeed shows there is a gap between spending in CPS and New Trier (the district where Meeks lead his 1,400 boycotters in protest) but that the data is also overly misleading because New Trier is just so far ahead of most other school districts in Illinois anyway.


Skoolboy explains that Illinois’ school districts still receive much of their funding from taxes; thus districts with a higher median income have a larger revenue per student.  Districts with lower median incomes depend on state funding to close the gap with districts that have higher median incomes, but Eduwonkette is quick to mention that this funding does not bring the lower income districts up to the same level and does an inadequate job of leveling the field.


It will be interesting to see how the affair plays out and if Meeks was simply looking for some national press or will he actually be able to squeeze out some more funding for CPS through his boycott?


Edit: Note Skoolboy’s comment please.