How many nonselective @ChiPubSchools prepare kids for college?

Catherine Deutsch from the Illinois Network of Charter Schools has a column up at Catalyst Chicago extending the debate raised by Daniel Hertz' original analysis of the Chicago Public Schools market.

Check out the full article here: Catalyst Chicago

Most interesting addition to the conversation (in my estimation) is this chart:

While certainly the ACT is not even close to a full or complete stand-in for measures of true intellectual and academic growth one thing is certain - that without a 21 cumulative ACT score even applying to most universities is a bridge too far, let alone acceptance. 

We can, and we should have a larger discussion about the true aims of a high school education, and how we should measure those aims, and the stakes of testing. We can and we should have a discussion of what it means to be college ready and what criteria universities should use for admissions decisions. We can and we should have a pedagogical discussion about the best ways to help students grow academically within their high school years.

But, at the moment a sad fact remains in Chicago: for students who enter high school behind there are only four non-selective schools in the city that consistently (on average) move them across a threshold for college application - and that is far too few.

A third way for college athletes, pay for play and the @NCAA

The efforts of a Northwestern football player to form a union have been in the news recently, reviving the debate of whether college athletes deserve to be paid and if so how much.

Certain things are clear:

1. Universities make a lot of money off of high profile college sports (usually basketball and football but occasionally others).
    
2. In almost all states the highest paid public employee is a coach of one of these sports (see chart above, thanks Deadspin).
    
3. The college athletes that participate in those sports who do not end up going pro (the vast, vast majority) do not see a benefit proportional to the value they deliver to the university.

So, a proposition. What if instead of arguing for the current pay of players, instead the NCAA creates a retirement system. Hear me out. The basic tenets:

1. A university must commit to delegating a percentage (for hypothetical sake, let's say 10%) of revenues from athletic events into a trust.
    
2. Student athletes who graduate from the institution then have a stake in that trust upon reaching the age 55 (again, arbitrary and hypothetical).
    
3. Student athletes who leave to go pro before graduating (I'm looking at you Jonny Manziel, Jameis Winston et al) do not receive access to funds, decreasing the number of applicants to the pool and increasing the anticipated pay out for those athletes that stick it out.

Are there a lot of cracks to be filled in, of course. But, a plan like this would increase the fairness of the existing system, while incentivizing graduation and compensating players for their role in a massive money-making organization without compromising the "integrity" of the idea of amateur athletes.