2026 is a watershed moment for Chicago Public Schools (CPS). For the first time in history, the Windy City will, come November, move from a fully appointed or partially appointed school board to one that is entirely elected. This transition—set in motion by a 2021 law championed by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU)—marks the end of a 30-year period wherein the city’s mayor had unilateral power to appoint both the Board of Education and district leader. And it may mark the end of Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools.
Progressive politicians and their teachers union allies have framed Chicago’s shift away from mayoral control of schools as a win for local democracy. In reality, it may jeopardize the district’s “open enrollment” or “choice” system, which has long been treasured by CPS families. Under this system, students aren’t required to attend their zoned neighborhood schools. Rather, they can apply to schools that have open seats in other neighborhoods, schools with International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, charter schools, or selective enrollment schools, which use standardized tests and grades to determine student admissions. During the 2022–23 academic year, 44.5 percent of elementary school students and 76.2 percent of high school students chose to attend a school other than the one assigned to them by CPS.
CPS families unequivocally support school choice, but that has not stopped some lawmakers and the CTU from trying to replace the open enrollment system with one that confines students to their neighborhood schools. These efforts came to a head in December 2023, when the Board of Education approved a resolution encouraging CPS to “transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.” Nine months later, the board officially passed a five-year plan to eliminate Chicago’s open enrollment system.
Progressive lawmakers and the CTU have directed particular ire toward the city’s 11 selective enrollment high schools, eight of which rank among Illinois’s top 25 schools. Admission to these schools is determined by a student’s final seventh-grade report card and score on an entrance exam. Each CPS household is assigned a socioeconomic tier from 1 to 4, with 1 representing lower-income neighborhoods and 4 representing higher-income neighborhoods. Applicants compete for a seat against other students in their tier. The city awards 30 percent of seats based on citywide academic performance, while the remaining 70 percent of seats are distributed among tiers.
Allocation of school resources in CPS is based, in part, on enrollment numbers. Any plan that requires greater enrollment at neighborhood schools will, then, result in fewer resources—or even closure—for these schools. With no laws currently in place to protect these institutions, the 2026 school board election has become a final line of defense. If voters elect a board hostile to competition and merit, then that may spell the end of educational choice in Chicago.
Critics of the selective enrollment high schools claim that they contain few, if any, so-called underrepresented minorities or low-income students, take resources away from neighborhood schools, and further educational inequities between White and Asian American students, on the one hand, and Black and Hispanic students, on the other. Let’s consider the validity of these claims and others.
To start, the history of Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools disproves the myth that these institutions encourage educational segregation. Lane Tech College Prep, the city’s first selective enrollment high school, was established in 1958 to train “budding scientists” amidst widespread concern that the U.S. was not producing enough scientists and engineers. In 1962, a second selective enrollment high school—Whitney M. Young Magnet High School—was founded as part of then-Superintendent James Redmond’s plan to get CPS families to voluntarily desegregate by opening magnet schools. Several more selective enrollment schools were founded under Paul Vallas, appointed the first-ever CEO of CPS by Mayor Richard M. Daley; Vallas viewed them as a way to keep high-performing students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds from leaving CPS for the suburbs or private school. Two additional selective enrollment high schools opened in 2009 and 2011 at the request of Black and Hispanic Chicagoans. In 2015, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel opened the city’s 11th selective enrollment high school.
What’s more, data from the Illinois Board of Education show that selective enrollment high schools benefit academically advanced CPS students, including those who are Black, Hispanic, or low-income. The same cannot be said for the district as a whole.
Indeed, at the five selective enrollment high schools that rank among Illinois’s top 25 schools and had the requisite data available, the Black-White achievement gaps in ACT English and math were, in 2025, considerably smaller than CPS. The average 11th-grade Black-White achievement gap in ACT English for these schools was -17.8 percentage points (versus -51.3 for CPS), while that in ACT math was -29.2 percentage points (versus -53.1 for CPS).
The Hispanic-White achievement gaps at Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools tell a similar story. At the six such schools that rank among the state’s top 25 schools and had the requisite data available, the average 11th-grade achievement gap in ACT English was -9.0 percentage points (versus 37.3 for CPS), while that in ACT math was -18.0 percentage points (versus -42.7 for CPS).
And contrary to what progressives and the CTU allege, Black and Hispanic students, in 2025, constituted a majority at three of the city’s top eight selective enrollment high schools and a plurality at four others.
Likewise, at least 33 percent of students at each of these specialized schools were classified as low-income last year, meaning that they received free or reduced-price lunch, lived in substitute care, or were from families that received public aid. In CPS, the achievement gap between low-income and non-low-income students in ACT English was -31.6 percentage points, and in ACT math, -30.5 percentage points. By contrast, the average gaps in selective enrollment high schools were only -7.0 (English) and -10.9 (math).
Did Black, Hispanic, and low-income students at Chicago’s top eight selective enrollment high schools outperform the district averages for their groups on the ACT because these schools spend more per student? No.
In fact, the opposite was true. In 2025, CPS spent, on average, $3,285 more per student than its top eight selective enrollment high schools—only to achieve markedly worse results.
Selective enrollment high schools in the U.S. offer academically advanced, public school students a rigorous education and opportunities typically only available in private schools. They are, in this way, a great equalizer in American secondary education. Data from the Illinois Board of Education show that Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools and the open enrollment system in which they operate have succeeded in this mission. These institutions—that are treasured by, and represent a lifeline to, talented students trapped in a failing district—ought to be celebrated, not eliminated.
