Fifteen students during this summer had got together from various Chicago Public Schools to conduct a survey to see the reasons why kids drop out from school. We wanted to create a survey after we examined and analyzed the “CPS 5-year Cohort Drop-Out and Graduation Rates”. Some of the numbers were absolutely shocking, making our mouths hit the ground!!! It was like there are two different types of schools in Chicago; The first type that the city wants to succeed, like Walter Payton, Whitney Young, and Lane Tech. And then there are the schools where failure is acceptable. For instance, Orr, Calumet, Academy, Tilden, Dyett, Senn, Marshall, Bowan and more have dropout rates from 2007, above 50%!!!!
You can look for yourself at:
http://research.cps.k12.il.us/cps/accountweb/Reports/allschools.html
During this summer we had worked hard, had fun and had got some interesting results. Some of the results were what we expected, while others were surprising. Approximately three hundred and ten surveys were completed. 95.6% of the students that had completed the survey go to CPS schools and 3.4% go to Private schools. The results that we predicted was that 93% of the students that had completed surveys planned on graduating, 72.7% felt that their education is valuable. 50.2% felt that their education is preparing them for the real world. Then we asked them on a scale from one to ten how much do they value their education and the average response was 8.5. For the question on how qualified is your teacher, the average was a 6.4. Another question was the rate of the learning environment in their school and the average was a 6.4. The last question was how fair are your teachers are and the average was a 5.9. Another question we asked was do you think CPS students are set up to fail. 43% said yes and 55% said no. We asked them what would you do to improve CPS and 12.2% said protest, 22.2% said to write letters to politicians, 19% said nothing, and 46% said protest and write letters. Another question was who has the power to improve CPS high schools. 22% had said government, 9.7% had said citizens that vote, 17% had said students, and 52.9% had said all of the above. Another question was, what is the best way to communicate to CPS students. They answered with 57.9% said MySpace, 6.5% said government, 15% said radio, 15.6% said newspaper, and 5% said other.
Because of this survey, we found out what the students of CPS really think. Many students want to improve their schools, but believe that they can’t. With this survey, it’s the beginning of getting a quality education. Now we know what we want and how to get it. We hope to get more increasing numbers from CPS students in the future.
Why do we need a quality education and why is it important to us? In order to have a good future you need a quality education. Also, student that work hard and get good grades deserve it. The reason why it is important to us is because we want to live a good life and with out an education we could not get far in life. We are demanding a quality education from public school. Not every one can afford a private school and if we can’t get a quality education from public schools where can we get it from?