Ted joined Ray and Nick to talk about the shocking numbers of children in Illinois schools that are not meeting math and reading standards and how this trend will greatly diminish their quality of life. Like at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy, where not a single one of its 366 students can do math at grade level.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- West Coast gas prices for Rust Belt Illinoisans.
- 2024 data: Not a single child tested proficient in math in 80 Illinois schools. For reading, it was 24 schools.
- Illinois isn’t building homes. Housing stock is up less than 1% vs. 2020, nation’s 2nd-worst performance.
- Illinois metro areas take the top four spots for nation’s highest property taxes. Rockford takes the crown.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
.Student motivation is at the root of this problem. Just how do teachers and parents motivate; some use rewards, and some use the stick. By law teachers cannot use the stick, like years long past.My parents used the stick, and I didn’t like it. parents need to be the motivators today, good luck.
Here’s a thought-teach students, teachers stop calling of, and base teacher raises on student outcomes. Stop blaming parents.
What world are you living in which has complicated problems solved with such 8th grade simplistic thinking? If it were all that simple it would have been solved long ago! Academic performance in public schools is dismal all over IL and in much of this entire country as well in rural area as well as city areas. You can verify that using the internet if you’d only care enough to take the time. Please do so for your own education.
The dismal performance of education throughout the country is not an exoneration of the education system. It’s an indictment of those who have been running the system for decades.
I’m going to ask all of us to ponder some basic questions here. 1. Who has the right and knowledge to determine “grade level” performance in any given test area? That takes a huge amount of audacity, doesn’t it? 2. If most students almost everywhere do not achieve at that level what sense does it make to keep thinking of what’s achievable in such lofty performance terms? 3. Why are we pressured to think that the majority of students generally should meet arbitrary performance standards which clearly are largely unattainable? 4. Doesn’t this whole mindset of meeting specific performance standards… Read more »
The real world imposes standards on all of us. Education is not exempt. It must meet standards in order to qualify as something more than babysitting. Yes, reality can be stressful. But learning to deal with that is part of the maturing process. If American students were testing far above students from other countries, but failing to meet internal American standards, then maybe you could argue that our standards are too high. But that is not the case. US students rank 28th out of 37 OECD countries in math, and only a little above average in reading and science. It… Read more »
Here is a comparison of student achievement from around the world.
The US students lag far behind the rest of the world.
https://bigthink.com/the-present/pisa-test-china/
https://13wham.com/news/nation-world/the-latest-breakdown-of-international-student-test-scores-is-out-heres-where-the-us-stands-programme-for-international-student-assessment-pisa-education-math-science-reading-crisis-in-the-classroom
I know most here want to blame teachers as the primary reason for students’ truly terrible average overall academic performance. Okay, I’ll accept that for a minute or two at least and agree we’ve found the chief culprits. The question then becomes what are we going to do about it—massive firings without due process individually? Don’t forget that teacher proficiency ratings in most public school districts on average show exemplary teacher performance ratings, really heavily weighing against massive firings based on poor employee performance. So, we might approach this more slowly realizing it will take many, many years of normal… Read more »
I believe getting rid of Common Core would help immediately both for students and teachers. It must be difficult if not nearly impossible for a teacher to try to teach CC to students who barely speak English at school and at home. Going back to the basics would help immensely even if there is a language barrier. For example most if not all of the kids we refer to have a cell phone or some type of electronic device even a cheap one. They can navigate/text/etc faster than we can. They have their own system of texting which is equivalent… Read more »
Many, if not all, of the countries that score higher than the US use a national curriculum. While you state the Common Core as something to abolish (I cannot state my opinion on this as I don’t have enough information) it seems as though you would support a nationwide curriculum for at least reading and math. Is this the case? Most of those other countries also have high stakes tests for which the students are accountable, again something that does not occur in the US although several states have their own tests. Would you support national graduation test?
Personally I think we as a nation ought to have some sort of make/break tests along the way by progressively limiting the courses of education to be fully paid or at least subsidized by tax money through the sixth grade, let’s say. You can only take the highest level of courses to ninth grade at public expense if you have at least some reasonably strict score on the first such weed-out test. Then, you take another such test in ninth grade to determine what level of courses you will take at public expense through twelfth grade. That’s essentially akin to… Read more »
Sorry this may be too long but this is a detailed explanation of Common Core and how it failed many students and teachers time in the classroom. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Taubman/PEPG/research/PEPG21_03.pdf Yes we need some sort of national standards. Education must start in the home but it is not the case for many kids in poorer inner cities so some sort of inexpensive learning tools at home should be explored. The schools for many are the first learning experience for the kids. Good healthy nutrition is lacking in the home so it should be given at school. Kennedy wants to take out all… Read more »
I can only speak about the short time I spent at CPS but they did have published curriculum guides for every grade level and all subjects. The goals weren’t impossible, like differentiating between to, too and two. However, that was over 30 years ago, things have changed for the worse. Destruction of the family structure and the unqualified teachers pool are factors. The middle class has fled the schools. It’s past time to completely reorganize.
James – the standards have been created based on historical norms. So it is a reasonable inquiry to ask why performance has declined. The standards can be reset, but the performance or lack thereof is real. The thing is you above most all other posters know why for the most part performance has declined. The demographics of those in our public schools have changed. Teaching to the mean, so to speak, of these groups is very challenging (again, you know) and is a significant reason why scores are so dismal in the lower performing schools. I mention this because I… Read more »
You have written a very thought provoking response here. I imagine there are several reasons for poor academic performance in so many schools and some places sure have reasons others don’t. That’s one of the biggest problems I see in so many viewpoints here—people focusing on one or two issues almost exclusively rather than thinking more broadly. Let me list just a few. We are living in a time of great migration as well as immigration, the number of daily distractions we all face because of split attention rather than focused attention, language issues, deciding what’s important at the moment,… Read more »
James and More, the point when NAEP scores began to drop precipitously is pretty clear, nationally and in IL — around 2012 to 2015. So, I am inclined to look for a cause that lines up with that in time. Something most have gone terribly wrong about then, but I don’t know what. Thoughts?
Maybe you’re on to something there. To make it true something or some things presumably of great negative significance socially had to affect much of this country somewhat simultaneously. Sorry, but nothing noteworthy of that size and scope immediately springs to mind.
Absolutely anecdotal, but in the school at which I was teaching, that is about the time in which each student had their own smart phone. I believe this coincides with the XBox One and PS 4 release as well. So many of my students now list “gaming” as their hobby it’s almost frightening…
Cellphones are at the top of my list as a suspect for at least part of whatever happened.
Jonathan Haidt has been exploring the smartphone issue heavily in his substack After Babel. It’s worth a look, although he focuses more on the technology as the problem and less on the content that kids are seeing. And it still leads us back to the basic issue: are we paying for daycare, or can we reasonably expect educated students as the result of the investments we make in “education”? If these kids cannot be taught, why do we continue to pay professional teachers who keep telling us it’s an insurmountable task? And if we think kids can be educated, what… Read more »
To become educated takes some combination of curiosity, ready enthusiasm or at least noticeable willingness to try something new that others have ordained for you over an extended time period and having faith that the results are worth the time and efforts expended. Those are not traits commonly found among people generally and probably for young people living carefree on Mom and Dad’s welfare system even less so. “You can lead a horse to water, but …..”
Maybe we should try actually leading the horses to water before we assume they won’t drink. Instead, schools are wandering around in the desert of progressive political agendas, with no water in sight.
I was headed in cost direction on this topic. I don’t profess to know the answer to the problem, there are numerous societal issues to address that have little to do with actual teaching that are at the root of the problem with education. Figuring out what to do here is key, but continuing to pay $27K per student, while everyone goes around in circles with theories, solutions and additional funding requirements…isn’t getting the job done. Kids that want to learn, are hampered in many schools because of the kids who don’t want to learn disrupting the classes. Right now,… Read more »
Have to respectfully disagree in part only. I agree that cellphones in it’s present form may be detrimental to learning but maybe having dedicated cellphones with safety features would help. Think Chromebooks. We are in a digital world now and we should embrace the tech. None of us had cellphones/computers when we were in school so we had to go to the library to do some homework. Now the library come to them and most of the entire world’s knowledge is at their fingertips. What did they think of when the abacus was invented. I’m sure many still liked the… Read more »
Yes. It’s not the device or the tech, it’s the apps they are using.
Here are some links to pros and cons of cellphones. Don’t forget one very good reason for students to have access to their cellphones. School shootings. The cell phone have saved many lives when a shooter is on a rampage.
https://www.edweek.org/technology/opinion-cellphones-in-schools-addiction-distraction-or-teaching-tool/2024/06
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-experts-pros-cons-cellphones-class.html
https://scienceandliteracy.org/why-should-students-be-allowed-to-use-cell-phones-in-class/
Sure, that seems to be a noted distraction for many people these days. Bored people surely do more than their share of it, and the time in question for students’ widespread first commonplace usage seems right, too.
Lots of science on cellphones ruining ability to concentrate, e.g., https://childmind.org/article/kids-shouldnt-use-phones-during-homework/
I also believe that PowerPoint is a blight on reasoning. It replaced writing in clear logic. Nothing forces you to think through your ideas and evidence better than having to write it out clearly. Few young people can do that today. PowerPoint, however, just strings together impressions, often in image form, rarely in any logical and consistent manner. “PowerPoint makes us stupid.” Search that and you will find many articles on it. General Mattis said it, too, 25 years ago, and said it has hurt war planning. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html
Mark, I could not agree more. Power Point has reduced what used to be an opportunity to write logically and provide clear ideas and solutions, using punctuation and proper word usage, to shortened lists and pictures. Exercises in writing teaches thought, organization, research, logic, planning, word usage, spelling and on and on.
“If it were that simple, it would have been solved.”
So said Kamala Harris about the border, while she wandered around looking for root causes. Joe Biden told us he couldn’t do anything about it, because Congress wouldn’t act. Mayorkas denied there was a problem at the border at all.
Trump took less than 90 days to stop the flood of illegals. As he said, it just took different leadership.
I think there’s a lesson in there for schools.
Have no fear! CTU’s new contract was all about helping schoolchildren, right?
It is pathetic. It doesn’t work. It makes NO sense. So…why doesn’t the education industry change? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome is insanity.
And where are the parents other than voting for the peolpe that have allowed it all to happen…
Yep, and their teachers retired in their mid 50s. Their superintendents hit the other state of Illinois lottery.