Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

One of Chicago Public Schools’ goal is for all students to be enrolled in high-performing schools, which the district defines as schools with high accountability ratings. However, there are large differences in the rates at which students of different races/ethnicities enroll in high-performing high schools. In the fall of 2018, 47 percent of Black ninth graders enrolled in a highly rated school compared to 70 percent of Latino students and 90 percent of White students. This large difference in enrollment patterns has persisted over time in Chicago.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) offers many high school options for families to consider. In fact, three of every four incoming ninth graders choose to attend a high school other than their assigned neighborhood school (Barrow & Sartain, 2017). However, the high school application process can be complicated. In the fall of 2017, students applying to ninth grade could choose from over 270 programs in 138 high schools. In an effort to simplify and streamline the process, CPS implemented GoCPS in 2017, a common application and single-best offer system across all high school choice programs for incoming ninth grade students. CPS expected that these changes would make the application process simpler, more transparent, and more equitable for students. Similar measures are in use in other urban districts such as New York City, Denver, Camden, New Orleans, Washington D.C., and Newark.

The centralization of the application process under GoCPS can give us new insights about a broad set of choices considered by students and families. Specifically, in this paper, we ask the following questions:

1. What is the path, from access to applications to enrollment, to a “high-quality” high school? How does the path vary for students of different races/ethnicities?
2. What are some of the barriers (e.g., distance from home to school, program eligibility requirements) to enrollment in “high-quality” high schools? And how do these barriers vary by race/ethnicity?

We find that Black students are the most likely to face barriers to enrolling in a high-rated high school. For instance, on average, Black students live near fewer high-rated seats than do students of other races/ethnicities, potentially making high-rated schools less accessible to these students. While Black students typically apply to more programs than students of other races/ethnicities, they are also less likely to rank a program at a school with high accountability ratings at the top of their application and to meet various program requirements such as test score or grade minimums. These findings suggest that some students may face barriers to enrollment in particular types of programs. When it comes to where students enrolled in the fall, we also see that Black students are much less likely to be enrolled in a school with a high accountability rating than other students. Although this is a pattern that existed long before GoCPS, findings like this one raise concerns about how characteristics like a student’s race/ethnicity and residential neighborhood influence access to programs and ultimately schooling choices.