Chicago Public School’s Back To The Future is Mired in the Past
By Erin Geary
January 31, 2024
The Office of the Inspector General Report for the Chicago Public Schools was released earlier this month. According to the report for the fiscal year 2023, there were over 2,000 complaints ranging from the most heinous accusations of sexual misconduct to characteristically expected complaints of CPS’ fraud. The most discussed issue in the news seems to be the misplacement of student computers that were or weren’t actually lost. No one knows for sure, though CPS had spent over $2 million on tracking device software. It’s all a mystery at tax payers expense.
Listening to the January 10th WBEZ’s podcast Reset with Sasha-Ann Simons, education reporters Sarah Karp of WBEZ and Nadar Issa of the Chicago Sun-Times discussed the OIG report’s findings and more.
The more included Sarah Karp’s reporting of an $18 million state grant provided to the Chicago Public School (CPS) in order to “re-engage” CPS students who dropped out during the pandemic. The University of Chicago Crime Lab worked beside CPS to gather data about the program in order to make recommendations after the first year of implementation.
The pilot program named Back To Our Future was pioneering. First, reach out to the organizations YAP, UCAN, and Breakthrough, who would support 1,000 former South and West Side students aged 14-21 to transition from the streets back to schools.
Who are these organizations?
Beginning in 1975, YAP (Youth Advocate Programs) became a nonprofit headquartered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Over time, it has added locations in 35 states, Washington, D.C., as well as internationally. It’s mission is to “deliver and advocate for safe and effective community-based alternatives to residential care and incarceration that empower individuals, families, an neighborhoods to thrive.”
According to its site, UCAN, an organization that has been around for 150 years. It works with Illinois youth by providing violence prevention services, therapy, and aiding those in the foster care system. They claim to serve over 9,000 youth, and their transition services have shown over 90% of those in foster care have remained with the same families for over a year.
Breakthrough is an organization that strictly serves those in Garfield Park. They emphasize a spiritual component to further their “network model” to build relationships. Trust is a hurdle for those who have been through trauma. Breakthrough believes that maintaining its presence in only one area of Chicago fosters success for their community while providing aid in the areas of education, housing, job placement and healthcare.
Through referrals, mostly from CPS itself, these organizations were used to communicate with targeted youth and their families to discuss the Back To Our Future program, hopefully persuading them to give education another chance.
Once the students signed on, the beginning of their transition toward re-enrollment was to participate in a 12-week group of services meant to provide support for mental health issues and understanding their role in their community while receiving mentorship and soft skills like civil communication and conflict resolution. They also worked toward regaining missing school credits. Students in this second phase were required to participate 20 hours a week. To incentivize the youth, Back To Our Future would pay them $15.40 an hour.
Though it seems common sensical that many soft skills are ingrained by middle-school, once teens have been away from the structure and routine schools provide for a year (or more) they tend to free-fall like Lord of the Flies. The University of Chicago found that of those referred to this program, nearly 50% had prior arrest records. When you consider the average age of the participants was 19, this is significant. And, let’s be honest, paying former students to return is not idyllic but realistic. How else would you initially encourage students who quit over a year ago to return to school? The hope was that once the dropouts received the initial 12-week scaffolding, they would intrinsically buy into school by understanding that an education would increase future opportunities.
Once the initial twelve weeks was completed, the third and last phase was to reintroduce them into the CPS system or allow them to obtain their GED while continuing to provide support via UCAN, Breakthrough, and YAP.
However, pilot programs are just as the name suggests. They are filled with trial and error, as was found by the first year of Back To Our Future. The University of Chicago Crime Lab tracked the initial year’s success rate, and it was poor. Less than half of the proposed 1,000 students signed on. For those thinking that 1,000 students was an overreach to begin with, realize that 16,000 students dropped out of CPS during the first year of Covid alone.
But the program’s initial year got even worse. The University of Chicago found that, though students in the second phase of the program were incentivized by pay to participate 20 hours a week, young people actually participated, on average, only 7 hours per week. Also, the goal was for students in the first 12 weeks to achieve 3 academic credits, but on average the youth received less than one full credit. Back To Our Future realized that the variety of needs for the returning students was vast and computerized learning failed them. Also, those farthest behind, perhaps due to poor reading skills, were the first to exit the program.
No doubt, we need to commend the CPS, Breakthrough, YAP, UCAN and the University of Chicago for attempting to address a decades long problem within CPS. However, I have questions.
First, how much time was spent by Breakthrough, YAP, and UCAN seeing what goes on in a CPS high school? The idea that there would be a one-size fits all solution when you deal with students of varying backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences leads me to believe not much time was spent seeing what teachers deal with on a daily basis.
Moreover, youth who drop out have a myriad of issues, which the mental health component was meant to solve. However, the three hours of therapy allotted for participants over twelve weeks certainly wasn’t enough to build trust and learn about individuals. The organizations committed to make at least two phone calls and two home visits over the course of the program. That’s not enough relationship building, especially for those students who were dealing with trauma. No surprise that the study found that most participants were leery, and the average amount of time spent with the mental health commitment was a half hour total. Even the soft skills average was a third of what it should have been. Were participants paid regardless? What was done to engage those not participating?
Next, why was the credit recovery done via computers? Covid created disengaged students because of online learning. Believing that paying a dropout $15.40 an hour to sit on a computer to make up credits was a stretch. Equally, The University of Chicago’s own Back To Our Future findings state, “In the first year, program partners relied on technology to deliver tailored educational support because individual instruction was just not feasible.” Why was tailored educational support with actual human beings “not feasible” when you were given $18 million dollars? Computers can’t replace tutors especially with hard to reach youth.
Furthermore, the Back To Our Future report, using CPS and Chicago Police Department data, supports what we already see on our streets. According to the report, the “characteristics” of those referred to Back to Our Future were overwhelmingly male (62%) and black (68%). Of the 87% dropouts, 41% hadn’t seen the inside of a classroom for over a year and a half. What specifically was tailored to address black males?
Most importantly, reporter Sarah Karp stated on the Reset podcast that of the 446 students who initially participated in this program, only 70 actually returned to a CPS school. Moreover, according to ABC7, just before Christmas 2023, 18 students involved in the program graduated. We should absolutely applaud those who now have a diploma.
However, let’s do some math: $18 million divided by 70 equals $257,142. Where was that money spent between CPS, YAP, UCAN, and Breakthrough? Let’s assume a state grant has to be used completely or will not be renewed for the following year. Will this Back To Our Future be awarded another grant next year?
I reached out to WBEZ reporter Sarah Karp, CPS at Back2OurFuture@cps.edu, and Dar’tavous Dorsey, The University of Chicago’s Director of Partnerships and Community Engagement. To date, I have not received replies to my queries.
The city of Chicago and CPS, obviously, has a violence problem that is linked to the idleness of those foregoing an education. How many times does it bear repeating before CPS gets serious? The keys to success include: faith and values, strong family structures with strong male role models, instruction of soft skills starting at home and the insistence of those skills in schools, and an educational system that accepts nothing less than high proficiency standards in the three R’s.
If parents and CPS don’t show consistency in these areas, our black males, in particular, will continue to see the inside of a prison cell rather than the inside of a dorm room.
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Erin Geary has thirty years of teaching experience in Chicago Public Schools, suburban public schools, and the Catholic Archdiocese. After retiring, Erin’s interest in writing led her start her own Substack in 2022. Her account– Common Folk 365– is where she writes unabashedly about politics, education, and culture. Her columns can be found at commonfolk365.substack.com,