By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
The Chicago Public Schools recently responded to a Wirepoints report and press conference that called out the school district for its failure to educate students. Our report, “Chicago Public Schools fails its Hispanic students: Only 17 of every 100 read at grade level,” details how union, district and state officials cover up CPS’ failures with policies that create a façade of success.
Rather than take responsibility for the district’s dismal results, however, officials only made excuses and empty promises. Univision, which ran a segment on Wirepoints’ report, released the following response from CPS officials:
“When the academic results were announced in the fall of 2022 we noted that in general, our results were consistent with those in other large urban districts. We also remind our community that these results directly reflect the challenges created by the pandemic and are not a reflection of the extraordinary talent and potential of our students and staff.”
CEO Pedro Martinez’s response to WBBM, which also covered Wirepoints’ press conference, avoided the issue altogether and made nothing more than empty promises about “innovative strategies.” His full comments are in the appendix below.
We tackle the district’s claims in reverse order.
1. CPS’ failure to educate Chicago’s Hispanic students isn’t due to the “challenges created by the pandemic.” CPS student outcomes were (1) dismal even before covid and (2) the district’s draconian pandemic policies only made things worse.
In 2019, only 17 percent of black and 25 percent of Hispanic students could read at grade level. An average reading proficiency of just 20 percent for minority students – before the pandemic – was a failure by any definition.
Ditto for “social promotion,” or passing kids along through the system, regardless of whether they could read or not. Math proficiencies for black students in 2019, for example, were locked in between 21% and 8% from 3rd grade through 11th grade. Just move them along.
And notice how CPS’ phrased its excuse as if it was the pandemic itself, and not the Chicago Teachers Union and CPS administrators’ policies, that caused student outcomes to collapse.
CPS is responsible for keeping schools closed for one of the longest periods in the nation – long after most of the country’s students were back in class. And they’re responsible for giving into the CTU’s demands that kept children masked for even longer still.
The net result was this: overall CPS reading proficiency declined from 27 percent in 2022 to 21.5 percent in 2021 and then down further to 20.1 percent in 2022.
What’s fascinating is how the school system rated teachers as student outcomes tanked. The percentage of CPS teachers evaluated as “excellent or proficient” jumped from 91 percent in 2019 to 100 percent in 2021. In 2022, though the percentage fell to 84 percent, the ratings continued to be grossly disconnected from the falling student outcomes.
2. That CPS outcomes are “consistent” with other large districts does not excuse its failure.
One of the worst excuses any education official could give for the failures at CPS is that all the other big districts are failing, too. But that’s exactly what CPS said: “in general, our results were consistent with those in other large urban districts.”
So, Chicagoans should just accept that a vast majority of their children are going to graduate unprepared for either college or a career just because Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York, etc. are performing just as badly?
It’s the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in action.
What makes CPS’ excuse all the worse is that Chicagoans pay the 2nd-most per student when compared to the nation’s 50 largest school districts, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
CPS spent $17,041 per student on operations in 2020. That’s hundreds and even thousands of dollars more than other big cities like Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Denver and Dallas. Only New York City was a bigger spender per student.
(When general, capital and debt spending is included, CPS spent nearly $30,000 per student in 2023.)
************
CPS and CEO Martinez’s response to Wirepoints report are emblematic of what’s wrong with Illinois’ education system today.
Instead of honestly acknowledging the district’s failures, they only make excuses to protect the broken system.
It’s as we said in our report:
The ongoing education failures in Chicago deserve far more attention. The media should be investigating why results are so low. Parents should be demanding answers from school officials. District administrators should be in a crisis-intervention mode to improve outcomes.
But nobody cares. And nobody’s accountable.
Appendix.
WBBM radio asked CPS CEO Pedro Martinez for comment on our study and reported the following:
Pedro Martinez said CPS created a three-year blueprint to address the problems, and this year students are ahead of the marks on literacy.
“I am excited by the strategies we have. Our teachers are excited with the new tools and the curriculum that we’re using,” Martinez said. “In fact , we have so much demand from our teachers who are training that it’s just a wonderful problem to have, because… teachers don’t really like professional development. They usually don’t see it as a great use of their time. We’re not seeing that with literacy.”
On Math, he said, the students are on track though he admits it’s not enough.
“We’re going to have some exciting announcements next month about how we’re partnering with large districts across the country to create innovative strategies to accelerate math,” Martinez said.
Read more from Wirepoints:
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.
Just wondering why the Latin communities don’t experience the same criminality, truancy and out of wedlock births within their population. Perhaps it’s the family tradition and values! I can tell you first hand, that operating gold coast restaurants for five decades, I didn’t have two African Americans looking for a job in any month ! Take a look in the kitchen next time you dine at your favorite restaurant !
It is a culture thing. Consider the ancestors of each groups history and there you will find the answer
Expecting any school system or bevy of teachers can remediate the damage done before these kids get to the CPS is folly ! These children are not prepared for school, socialization or social engagement. No way, no how will any school system be successful given the first five years of these children’s lives. Wishing don’t make it so !
Hurrah! That’s one of the brightest all-encompassing statements I’ve ever read in several years of monitoring this website’s commenters’ remarks! Does the basic truth of it resonate with others here? Parents are the first and most intensive influencers of their children thoughts and behaviors whether they realize it or not. In a real sense generally they make or break their children’s chances for good, productive and happy lives during their stewardship.
The problem is single parenthood is and has been encouraged by the state for decades in order to get more benefits. We always hear the phrase single parent and immediately what comes to mind is a single unmarried woman regardless of race but we know what they look like. Seems to be ingrained or etched into our minds by media. Have you ever heard of any single male parent? Quick! What popped into your mind? What do they look like in your mind? Different from the single female parent. Marriage is long gone the way many of us were brought… Read more »
Remediate a damaged society? No. Teach children reading and math? Yes. Otherwise, why do we have schools?
It’s amazing that we are constantly told it can’t be done, and it shouldn’t be expected. Then we are told we must increase spending on what can’t be done.
I’m sure Pedro can come up with some reason why it is YTs fault.
If external circumstances are a valid excuse for professional malpractice , all nurses and doctors should be exempted from responsibility for similar bad client outcomes.
Obviously his high salary is paid to do the work of propagandizing a narrative, not anything to do with getting results. They rate CPS the best ever, but reality rates it much differently. The childish response from the top indicates that CPS has no intention of ever facing its inadequacies like an adult solving a problem. Even when given the chance to solve their problems in a totally leftist manner they fail. Even if we took school choice, vouchers, charters, individually reviewed teachers, bi-lingual, etc off the table, and let them do things entirely “their way”… They still cant manage… Read more »
Listen to this man’s fake sounding accent when he talks in a speech. Not sure if it’s fake but it sure sounds like. He’s talks with a working class immigrant accent to give him some intersectional credibility among white liberals and the latinks community. But the man moved the US when he was five years old. He graduated from CPS Juarez High School and attended the School of Business at University of Illinois where he obtained an accounting degree, and then earned his MBA from DePaul University. This is basically my education with similar Illinois universities, and in all my… Read more »
And that’s why he’s not there to get results. He’s there to just do the part, act like the True Latino (Hear his authenitic Latino accent? Just ignore that he’s a business major with an MBA who has lived in Chicago since he was 5 years old, and has spent his entire life around upper middle class business professionals as he worked his way up the superintendent ladder)…and because he’s a true latino with an authenic accent, he represents the intersectional interests of the 50% latino CPS system. He’s there for them, he’s just like them, when latino students listen… Read more »
Play nice. You want to ensure you can have civil debates with elected officials. That CPS is acknowledging the report is a big step forward unto itself.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. You need to be civil, but loud and persistent.
I am reminded of the old saying ” you can lead a horse to water, but you cant make him drink “
If nothing else Democrats are consistent. Here again in this situation they are paying for failure. More and more Hispanics are coming to Illinois. If the parents of these children think they’re going to get a good education in the United States, they better think again. It’s not about the education, especially in Illinois, it’s about the money the educator can earn. That’s a fact.
I’d suspect that in my own generation there were ‘zero’ illiterates, certainly the case in my neighborhood. Then again, I didn’t know a single family that didn’t have a father in the home, didn’t spend time every night with homework and we all knew who our father was ! He went to work every day, came home every night and din’t know what the inside of jail cell looked like. No shootings, no knife fights, no burglaries and nary a bloody nose to be seen. There’s little hope for these fatherless children, the schools in their neighborhoods and certainly more… Read more »
A significant reason for Chicago’s exploding crime is that the the County refuses to put these children in jail before their 18th birthday. These are the super-predators that Biden and Hillary warned us about.
I don’t know what to do about multiple generations of fatherless children. Trying to reverse the tide of this cultural phenomenon will prove impossible.
and you can’t start to reverse the tide until the public admits to the problem, and that’s not happening anytime soon in Chicago.
The solution these generational problems can be as simple as mandated vasectomies, pursuant to three violent crimes. Perhaps the testosterone levels in these rabid animals can be eliminated along with the violent crimes that go hand and hand with their predisposition to violence. What the hell has society got to lose?
Doesn’t that seem to suggest the start of other things maybe well intended superficially but essentially barbaric? It probably leads to other “solutions” equally bad or worse.
“Three Generations of Imbeciles are Enough” — The Case of Buck v. Bell
https://education.blogs.archives.gov/2017/05/02/buck-v-bell/
What other kind of response do you expect from Democrats? When they’re not lying, they’re redirecting to something else. They assume people are stupid, and in the case of Democrat voters, they’re correct.
More doublespeak and empty words from the CTU. Kinda like what they feed the students in lieu of an education.
Is everyone getting paid, benefits, health care, and pensions?
Start paying for performance and things will change.
The system is not set up for education, it is set up for adults to get great paying jobs regardless of the outcomes.
Anyone know what Pedro Martinez is being paid and his pension benefits will be? I bet the number will knock your socks off.
As you say, given the ‘success’ of Chicago’s public schools, I’ll bet whatever Martinez earns would be shocking. The fact that he even has that job is shocking.
Martinez signed a five-year contract with CPS schools in late October 2021 with a starting salary of $340,000 – $40,000 more than former CPS CEO Janice Jackson earned before exiting the position. Martinez’s next raise is expected to increase his salary by $10,506.
The district will chip in an amount equal to 7% of Martinez’s salary to his annual pension contribution and another 10% to a supplemental savings account. He will get four weeks of paid vacation per year.
If the school board chooses to part ways with Martinez without cause, he will be paid severance equal to 20 weeks of his annual base salary.
Do you know the pension payout amount? And at what age does it start?
Most of them in his position have a value over $10 million in total payouts.
All footed by the taxpayers for doing the worst job in history of the Chitty.
Many pensions are clearly excessive, but don’t just make stuff up saying things like “most in his position have a value over $10M.”
Retired Illinois Educators Taking Home Millions in Pensions | Chicago News | WTTW
The top pension earner this year is Lawrence A. Wyllie, an indicted former superintendent of Lincoln-Way High School District 210, who stands to make $321,443 this year.
Second on the list is former New Trier Superintendent Henry S. Bangser, who will pocket $312,460 from his pension. He retired at age 57 and has already collected nearly $3 million in retirement. Number three is Gary Catalani, former Wheaton Warrenville District 200 superintendent who later held a superintendent job in Arizona. He’ll pocket $310,070 this year.