At Gage Park High, Students and Teachers Have Suffered
- Producing Organization
- WBEZ
- Contributing Organization
- WBEZ (Chicago, Illinois)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/50-24jm681m
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- Description
- Description
- "Many teachers at Gage Park High School had high hopes heading into this year. A young, energetic principal was determined to prove that a struggling neighborhood high school could actually get better. But then, in the months before school began, Chicago Public Schools removed the limit on enrollment at the school. Chicago Public Radio's Jay Field reports on how the subsequent overcrowding is threatening the academic future of the Gage Park class of 2010. ** If there's one person who embodies the optimism and heartbreak at Gage Park this year, it's a teacher named Roberto Parades. He's been at the school for seven years. He's taught every level of Spanish, coached soccer and is a nationally board certified teacher. It's the profession's highest honor. Roberto Parades: I want to be as hard as possible. And I push for rigor. I don't push for perfection. But I have to set the bar high. Paredes to his class: You can go to any college. But its not going to do you any good, if you can't handle the rigor of it. You understand Reece? Okay, I want you to get together in your groups and catch up in your work. The tutors are here… Paredes has this way of motivating students-a good cop-bad cop mix of encouragement, toughness and passion. Its an X-factor not all teachers have. Marty McGreal: He was just a go getter and he wanted these kids to succeed. That's why last summer, Marty McGreal, Gage's incoming principal, tapped Parades to lead a key effort to keep at-risk freshmen in school and focused on their academics. For years, Gage had been known more for academic failure and violence, than quality education. But there had been small signs of progress on the ACT college placement test in the previous two years. And with Parades help, McGreal was determined to build on the momentum. Marty McGreal: My number one goal-and the reason I'm in the system-is to show that an urban neighborhood school can work. I think we had a shot. And I loved the fact that I had an opportunity at a school that had so many problems. And I saw that we were just at the first couple steps. McGreal, Parades and other educators at Gage traveled to Atlanta last summer to train in something called AVID. The program tries to instill better study habits and high expectations across an entire curriculum---in a bid to improve a school's culture and get more students to go to college. Paredes says his plan as leader of the newly created freshman academy was to use the AVID principles to help struggling ninth graders. But before he visited a single freshmen classroom, the ground beneath him shifted. CPR NEWSCAST: Chicago Public Schools officials have fired the interim principal at Gage Park High School, apparently he refused to enroll more students. Roberto Parades: The very first day of school we try to tell each and every student they have a chance. They have an opportunity to be all that they can be. But those are only words. On a late May afternoon, at a Mcdonalds near Gage Park, Roberto Paredes is looking back, with regret, on the past year. After McGreal's firing, Gage Park ended up enrolling hundreds of additional freshmen. Roberto Parades: I don't know. I ask myself the question, ""Are the kids better right now-than what they were in September---I don't really think so. Gage Park didn't have a firm plan or the additional resources and manpower to handle the influx. Roberto Parades quickly found that his new job as freshman coordinator had changed. Roberto Paredes: It wasn't the job I thought it was going to be. Because I did not want to chase students for discipline problems. I wanted to chase them for academic problems. But instead, Parades spent the first three months of school suspending unruly freshmen. 9th grade suspensions at Gage last fall went up by sixty-five percent over the previous year. The chaos had a devastating impact on the academic performance of the freshmen. Curtis Drake: My name is Curtis Drake and I'm fifteen years old. Arielle Leonard: My name is Arielle Leonard and I'm sixteen years old. Drake and Leonard sit face to face Roberto Paredes noontime AVID class. School is nearly over and Curtis Drake says some of his classes are still out of control. Curtis Drake: Just this morning, in my third period class, someone threw a rock at me. I was just sitting there, doing my work and they decided to throw a rock at me. But luckily I wasn't in the way, so it went right past me. Drake says this kind of stuff has been happening to him all year. He says it's a big reason he's getting two Fs right now. Curtis Drake: That distracted me from doing my work and made me forget everything I learnt. So that kinda makes me not really do so well and I want to, but still, I can't. Because these kids, they mess with me. Arielle Leonard listens. She knows what Drake's talking about. Leonard has had a similar problems this year in her literature class. Arielle Leonard: It's really hard to concentrate in there. The teacher-all she does is tell them to be quiet. She doesn't really get a chance to teach. Half the time, while the students are yelling, she's yelling down the hallway for the security guard. And sometimes the security guard will come and get the students. Other times they'll say, ""I'll stop, I'll stop."" But then they don't stop. So Leonard has struggled to read, take notes, comprehend the material and keep up. She's getting an F in the class. In the first three months of school, sixty percent of the more than six hundred 9th graders at Gage failed one or more courses. Forty-two percent failed two or more. And this spring's grades are not expected to be any better. David Pickens is an aide to Chicago Public School's CEO Arne Duncan, responds this way-when asked if the district's handling of the situation at Gage put freshmen at risk. David Pickens: We felt and we still feel that 17-hundred is a reasonable amount of students. Think what we can do-and what we have done as a district in terms of addressing the security issues is making sure that they have the proper amount of security resources for the environment. I ask Pickens if he would send his kids to Gage Park. David Pickens: Well, you know, my kids are they're small kids, they're very small kids. I will plan on sending my kids to a neighborhood elementary school and high school. Roberto Paredes: I don't think I would send my son or daughter to Gage Park. Paredes says that every year he's been at Gage Park he's left in June, feeling like the school had made at least some progress. But not this year. Roberto Paredes: Ninth grade is the foundation of what's going to happen the next four years. If the kids are failing and not getting good grades, I mean, that's going to piggyback on their bad habit and their good habits and its going to be a very determining factor on what's going to go on for the rest of their high school academia. Paredes says he's demoralized and feels like he's fighting a losing battle. Roberto Parades: I've never thought about leaving. But this is the first year I'm open to the idea of it. Paredes says he's not alone. He says he acts as a mentor to fellow teachers and many tell him they simply don't have the same energy or hope they had when the school year began. The possible loss of a talented, Nationally Board Certified Teacher like Parades-at a school like Gage Park-ought to worry Chicago Public Schools. The district has made teacher recruitment and retention in at-risk schools one of its top priorities. I'm Jay Field, Chicago Public Radio. "
- Media type
- Sound
- Credits
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: WBEZ
Editor: Drew Hill
Producing Organization: WBEZ
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
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Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ-FM) and Vocalo.org
Identifier: (unknown)
Format: audio/mpeg
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- Citations
- Chicago: “At Gage Park High, Students and Teachers Have Suffered,” WBEZ, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed May 13, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-50-24jm681m.
- MLA: “At Gage Park High, Students and Teachers Have Suffered.” WBEZ, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. May 13, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-50-24jm681m>.
- APA: At Gage Park High, Students and Teachers Have Suffered. Boston, MA: WBEZ, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-50-24jm681m