Chicago Public Schools is pursuing a new plan to address the inequities its Black students face.

The Black Student Success Plan aims to bring in more Black teachers, reduce suspensions against Black students, promote teaching on Black culture, increase belonging and close opportunity gaps. It provides a five-year roadmap to improve the outcomes of Black students, who make up a third of the district’s population.

But it’s also facing some challenges with national policies against diversity programs.

Conservative advocacy group Parents Defending Education says the plan is discriminatory. It filed a civil rights complaint through the Department of Education the day after CPS launched the initiative.

The Virginia-based national organization has challenged diversity and equity programs in schools across the country. It asked the department to block the implementation of the plan and to conduct a Title VI audit of CPS. The complaint invoked the Equal Protection Clause, the Civil Rights Act and a letter from February ordering school districts and universities to do away with diversity initiatives or risk losing federal funding.

“CPS is failing students of all races and ethnicities, which makes this racially segregated program all the more egregious,” the complaint says. “CPS’s racially exclusive plan also runs afoul of this [Education] Department’s own guidance.”

Chicago is now facing significant national scrutiny for its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. Last month, CPS also got hit with a Title IX investigation over its policies supporting transgender students.

Decoteau Irby, an education policy professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, led community meetings to help create the plan. He says that anti-DEI complaints targeting the Black Student Success Plan don’t take into account the benefits that come with helping underserved groups.

“When … policies and practices focus on benefiting and supporting the most marginalized groups, it actually benefits everybody,” said Irby. “If we look at Chicago, there’s huge opportunities for growth when we focus on Black students.”

Irby, along with several other community members, heard from teachers, families and other stakeholders about their experiences as Black people in CPS schools. After the six-month planning process, Irby reported back to the district with data and ideas that would go into the final plan.

The Black Student Success Plan also acknowledges past historical wrongs that have put Black students at a disadvantage, such as redlining and other discriminatory practices limiting their academic options. Irby says this historical understanding of families’ frustrations and obstacles was important in developing plans to address systemic barriers.

“We started with an acknowledgement of school closures, but we went back further than that,” said Irby. “We started with the ‘Willis Wagons’ that were on the South Side. We started with an acknowledgment of the redlining that actually kept Black students in overcrowded schools a few blocks away in some neighborhoods from schools that were under-enrolled for White students.”

Duane Davis, a former CPS student and teacher with a son who graduated from the district, also helped create the plan and attended several community meetings on Chicago’s West Side. He says that Black families face unique challenges that impact their educational experiences — such as far travel distances to school and the high cost of living forcing them out of the city.

“We now have a culture in Chicago where you can live in a neighborhood and your child goes to school in a different neighborhood because you feel like you need to go to a different neighborhood in order for your child to feel safe and for them to get a great education,” said Davis. “And for some families, that is untenable. They don’t drive, they don’t have a car, they don’t trust public transportation, they don’t have a familial network in order to help them pick up and drop off their young people at school.”

Despite making some academic gains, Black students continue to struggle academically.

According to the 2024 Illinois Report Card, almost 60% of White students in CPS are proficient in English and Language Arts. That’s compared to 21% of Black students. That number is up from 11% in 2022, but Davis says much more work needs to be done to address the disparity. He pointed out how college access among Black students continues to lag behind other demographics.

“African-American women and African-American men are the lowest performing,” said Davis. “After 20-plus years, that’s where we are. We need to improve that number. Period, point blank, end of story. Does it mean we stop doing the things that we were doing before? Of course not. It just means that we need to be a lot more targeted and specific in how we do things.”

Note: This article has been updated to correctly reflect that CPS is facing a Title IX investigation.

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