New Issue Brief: Chicago Risks Closing Some of Its Most Successful Public High Schools 

Study finds Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools deliver strong academic results, broad access for low-income students, and lower costs 

NEW YORK, NY – A new Manhattan Institute issue brief by Renu Mukherjee, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Boston College, warns that proposed changes to open enrollment in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) could jeopardize some of the city’s highest-performing and most cost-effective public high schools.

For years, progressives in Chicago and their teachers’ union allies have called to eliminate the city’s open enrollment system, which allows students to enroll in schools other than their neighborhood assignment. Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Chicago officials have advocated for replacing this system with a neighborhood-based assignment model, which could ultimately lead to the closure or dismantling of the city’s selective enrollment high schools.

Critics such as Johnson have stated that these schools are deep sources of inequality for minority students and divert crucial funding away from traditional district schools – arguments that are parroted in the national debate over educational opportunity, equity, and the future of school choice. However, Mukherjee’s assessment of enrollment patterns, student demographics, achievement gaps, and per-student spending for Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools finds these fears are unwarranted. 

Key findings include:

• Selective enrollment high schools serve large shares of disadvantaged students. For example, in 2025, at least one-third of students at each of the city’s top selective enrollment high schools—those that rank among Illinois’s top 25 schools—were low-income.
• Achievement gaps are smaller in selective enrollment schools than across CPS overall. Gaps between black and white, Hispanic and white, and low-income and non-low-income students are substantially smaller at selective enrollment high schools compared to district-wide averages.
• Selective enrollment schools cost less per student. In 2025, CPS spent, on average, $3,285 more per student than the city’s top selective enrollment high schools, despite producing worse outcomes on key ACT achievement gap measures. 
• Chicago families actively exercise school choice. During the 2022–2023 school year, more than 76% of CPS high school students attended a school other than their neighborhood-assigned campus. 

As policymakers debate the future of selective admissions and open enrollment, Mukherjee’s findings suggest that eliminating these schools would remove high-performing, lower-cost options that disproportionately benefit academically motivated black, Hispanic, and low-income students.

Click here to read the full issue brief.