Chicago Teachers Say They Were Told To Give Illegal Migrants Passing Grades

Multiple teachers at Chicago Public Schools say administrators told them to give illegal migrant students passing grades last school year.

Several elementary school teachers told WGN Radio they were instructed by school administrators to give their migrant students a 70% grade in every subject and approve their move up to the next grade, even if the children demonstrated severe academic deficiencies.

Complicating matters, none of the elementary school students in these teachers’ classes spoke any English, while the teachers spoke no Spanish. The schools did not offer classes to teach English as a second language.

Last month, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez assured that migrant students were held to the same standards as Chicago’s American students.

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However, a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson later acknowledged to WGN Radio that the district’s guidelines for moving students up to the next grade are “modified to serve the specialized needs of English Language Learners.”

Nearly 50,000 illegal migrants have arrived by bus in Chicago from the Texas border since 2022. The city is currently paying to shelter about 13,000 newly arrived migrants.

The sudden influx has strained the city’s finances and caused city leaders to scramble for space to shelter the new arrivals. For months the city debated how to keep migrants warm during the winter months.

Overall, the city spent more than $400 million on the migrant crisis over the past two years, with much of that money going to private companies that worked on sheltering the migrants.

Many of the new migrants have settled in Chicago’s predominantly black neighborhoods. The drain on city resources has sparked tensions between Chicago’s black community and the newcomers.

“People are angry about the lack of resources in their community,” said Richard Wallace, a community organizer who is working on the issue. “People are angry about joblessness. People are angry about the cost of living skyrocketing.”

Meanwhile, it’s not just migrant students who are struggling. American students in Illinois and across the country continue to struggle with learning loss after the pandemic forced them out of school and into remote learning.

Only about a fourth of all Illinois public school students are back to pre-pandemic performance levels in English language arts, according to a recent student from the University of Illinois System. Even fewer are back to pre-pandemic levels in math.

Immigration has become one of the main issues on voters’ minds as Election Day approaches.