Teachers at Chicago Public Schools told to give passing grades to illegal immigrant students

A local radio station in Chicago is reporting that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teachers have been instructed to give illegal immigrants passing grades.

Teachers who spoke with the radio station said the students spoke no English, the teachers spoke no Spanish, and the immigrants were concentrated in black communities where no English language support is offered, reported local WGN Radio.

WGN claims they interviewed “several” CPS teachers, none of whom taught at the same school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, but nonetheless shared the same story as related by one teacher. 

“The teacher said specifically that she was 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,” WGN Radio’s Sylvia Snowden told their affiliate WGN-TV via Zoom on Thursday. 

Chalkbeat estimates that between 9,000-17,000 illegal immigrant students are attending CPS schools. At a per pupil cost of $29,900, that comes to $269-$508 million annually for instruction on students who struggle to learn because they don’t know the language of instruction. 

Another teacher said that she had to rely on Google Translate “for the entire year” to communicate with students, said Fox News.  

Chicago is one of the oldest so-called sanctuary cities. Former Mayor Harold Washington issued an executive order in 1985 forbidding the city from cooperating with the federal government in deportation proceedings against illegal immigrants, according to local public radio WTTW.  

Since then, four other Democrat mayors have upheld the order: Ritchie Daley, Rahm Emanuel, Lori Lightfoot and current Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CPS and Chicago’s Teachers Union (CTU) official. 

Ironically, the Chicago Tribune blames the illegal immigrant crisis, at least partially, on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Texas has been shipping illegal immigrants to Chicago by bus, taking the “City with Broad Shoulders” at its word as a sanctuary for illegal immigrants.  

The Tribune estimates that 47,200 illegal immigrants, mostly from Venezuela, have passed through Chicago. 

By contrast, in Dallas, Texas, 828,000 illegal immigrants are subject to deportation because of their legal status. 

“Abbott did not produce the migrant crisis over the past two years, but he magnified it, forcing Democrats to reshape their party’s thinking about welcoming immigration promises,” claimed the Tribune.  

Spreading out the pain of illegal immigration to so-called sanctuary cities controlled by Democrats was likely the purpose of the Abbott busing program.  

But Abbott isn’t the only source of illegal immigrants for Chicago.   

Congressional reports indicate that it least in the case of Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and more than 70 other nationalities, the Biden-Harris administration has admitted 434,000 otherwise illegal immigrants under a parole scheme.  

The program flies illegal immigrants released on “parole” directly to cities nationwide. 

Chicago ranked 13th nationally as a port of entry under the Biden-Harris program in 2023.  

CBS News reports that other Biden parole schemes brought that number up to over one million illegal immigrants resettled all over America by January 2024.  

The illegal immigrant crisis in Chicago schools comes at a time that CPS faces a $505 million budget deficit, even as the teachers’ union is demanding a new $50 billion contract, equal to the size of the entire state of Illinois’ annual budget.  

The Illinois Policy Center said that state and local leaders, including union officials, have been wrangling over the blame for the deficit.  

But critics are concerned about how the policies are hurting school children. Not only the illegal immigrant children, but children in largely black communities, where the migrants are housed, are likely being held back from learning as a result of the resource drain caused by the influx.  

Black students at CPS, outside of advanced academic selective schools, attain grade level proficiency in reading in just 8.1% of the population and at just 5.3% of the population in math. 

Initially, CPS denied the WGN reports, saying that all illegal immigrant students are held to the same standard, but when confronted by WGN’s reporting, CPS told the radio station that the district’s promotion guidelines are “modified to serve the specialized needs of English Language Learners.” 

That modification includes giving all illegal immigrant students at least a 70% passing mark in every subject, while moving them on to the next grade automatically, said CPS teachers who spoke to WGN. 

Earlier, The Lion reported that Illinois ranks number six in a survey for “Best States for Teachers.”