Chicago teachers say they’re being pressured to pass migrant children

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Chicago Public Schools teachers raised the alarm about a disturbing mishandling of education, alleging that they were pressured to give migrant students passing grades regardless of their performance.

Several teachers anonymously reached out to WGN News with the allegations, saying that district administrators directed them to promote the migrant children to the next grade even if they were currently failing academically.

“The teachers we spoke with work in CPS elementary schools and say they spoke no Spanish, while their migrant students spoke no English, making communication virtually impossible. They also added that because their schools were located in predominantly Black neighborhoods, they offered no English as a Second Language (ESL) support,” WGN’s Sylvia Snowden reported.

“Despite this, they say they were instructed by school administrators to give their migrant students a 70 percent in every subject and pass them on to the next grade,” she added. “Teachers say this was the case even if their migrant students displayed severe academic deficiencies.”

(Video Credit: WGN9)

One teacher said she had been “instructed to give the student a passing grade and send her on to the next grade level even though, in this particular case, the student was testing at a kindergarten level,” Snowden said.

Baltazar Enriquez, the director of Little Village’s Community Council, said the parents of newly arrived migrant students have been complaining to him about their children not getting educated.

“They just tell them, ‘Sit there, read a book, or they let them be on their phone,’” Enriquez said. “They’re not understanding anything that’s going on. And they want to understand. They want to learn.”

“We’ve seen some of the teachers frustrated because they can’t communicate with the students,” he said.

CPS Superintendent Pedro Martinez insisted in a radio interview in August that the same academic standards are used for migrant and American students, claiming that “over 90%” have bilingual support programs in their schools.

“However, once confronted with our reporting, a CPS spokesperson acknowledged in a statement that the district’s promotion guidelines are ‘modified to serve the specialized needs of English Language Learners,’” WGN reported.

Since August 2022, over 48,000 new migrants have arrived in the city from the southern border, according to data from the city of Chicago. Migrants have been bussed and flown there from the Texas border creating a “fluid and dynamic situation” requiring several shelters to house the newcomers.

A CPS spokesperson told the outlet that they aim “to provide a rigorous, welcoming, inclusive pre-K-12 environment for all students, including those who’ve newly arrived in Chicago.”

“As a district, we have high expectations from all students and policies and promotion guidelines in place, that are modified to serve the specialized needs of our English language learners, and offer in-school, after-school year-round interventions developed with the principal, counselor, teacher, and parents to target the students’ assessed learning deficiencies,” the spokesperson told WGN News.

Snowden noted that the issue will continue to be investigated as the school year unfolds.

“We want to make sure that what’s best for them and their futures is really what remains a focal point in the story,” she said. “as we continue digging, we are going to see what other supports these students have or haven’t been getting.”

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.