Chicago teachers have come forward claiming they are being directed to give migrant children a “passing grade” of C or 70 percent, regardless of their actual academic performance. This comes as Chicago, a sanctuary city, has welcomed around 50,000 illegal immigrants, primarily from Venezuela, since 2022. These individuals have been transported from the southern border, many of them ending up in predominantly black neighborhoods of the city, according to WGN AM720.
Journalist Sylvia Snowden, in an interview, stated she had spoken with numerous Chicago Public School teachers who shared that they were instructed to ensure migrant children passed their classes, even if it required adjusting grades.
“We’ve had multiple Chicago Public School teachers come forward to us at WGN News and exclusively tell us that they were instructed to give these students passing grades in their classes, regardless of academic performance,” Snowden said.
She explained it wasn’t only in-class assignments and exams where this was happening. “It’s not just the classes but the academic testing, the standardized testing that the students do every single year. We had one teacher tell us … that her student simply was not at [passing] grade level based upon the tests that were taken.”
During the interview, radio host Jon Hansen pointed out that he believed standardized testing was state-managed and not controlled by individual teachers.
“The information comes back,” Snowden clarified. “When the tests have been proctored, after they’ve been evaluated, the teachers are able to see the scores. And when the teachers saw the scores, they saw that the students were not at grade level, yet they were instructed to give them 70 percent in every single class, which is the minimum C, and pass them on to the next grade.”
In response to these claims, Chicago Public Schools issued a statement: “Chicago Public Schools aims to provide a rigorous, welcoming, inclusive pre-K through 12 environment for all students, including those who are newly arrived in Chicago with their families from around the globe. As a district, we have high expectations for 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 described deficiencies.”
