By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
The spin is on. A few ‘select’ media outlets have gotten early access to the newest student performance data on the Chicago Public Schools, so cue the headlines:
- Chicago Tribune: CPS elementary students’ IAR test scores show partial gains in reading and math
- Chalkbeat: More Chicago students met reading and math standards in 2022-23, data show
- Chicago Sun-Times: West Englewood school offers a model for how Chicago Public Schools plans to improve math scores
The Illinois State Board of Education isn’t set to publicly release the state’s 2023 Report Card until the end of October, but the early reporting is a perfect example of how the traditional media covers for Illinois and Chicago’s failed leadership. Lots of talk on “promising results,” “important progress,” “calls to action,” and “figuring things out.” And excitement that student scores on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness are almost back to pre-covid 2019 levels.
But the goal shouldn’t be to get back to 2019. The results were dismal then, with just 27 percent of students reading at grade level and just 24 percent in math, and they’re dismal now (26 percent and 18 percent, respectively).
The real story is that CPS is spending 40 percent more than it did four years ago – now nearly $30,000 per student – and yet there’s nothing to show for it.
The media message should instead be something like this: CPS will continue to lose students and families as long as only 2 out of every 10 minority children are able to read or do math at grade level – 115,000 black students alone have left the district in the last twenty years. The outcomes are disastrous for the city’s workforce and the future of Chicago when it comes to individual prosperity, poverty and crime.
Until officials obsess with literacy and basic math skills, set increasingly high targets and then hold accountable those in charge of reaching those targets, Chicago Public Schools will continue to fail the children and parents that need it to deliver a good education.
But the media will never say anything like that. Nor will Illinois or Chicago’s leadership. Instead, it’s the same rhetoric, excuses and hypocrisy year after year after year.
That’s the case whether it’s Gov. J.B. Pritzker saying Illinois’ results show “great promise,” or Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson saying testing has “roots in eugenics…” or CTU President Stacy Davis Gates sending her child to a private school after declaring private schools “Segregation Academies.”
What does change is the growing amount of money for schools and the shrinking number of students. CPS has lost 116,000 students in the last two decades, or 27 percent.
They’ll never fix CPS, which is the case we made here. Not even a 40% jump in spending to $30,000 has made a difference. Nor will they fix Illinois’ public schools. Illinois already spends the ninth most in the country per student, and when even a well-off community like Arlington Heights (School District 214) has fewer than half of its children able to read at grade level, more spending isn’t the answer there either.
The only remaining answer is school choice.
School choice won’t save education in this state. It’s not a silver bullet. But it will save lots of families who want out of the failed system and the perpetual political spin.
The Invest in Kids Act, the state’s small scholarship program supported by tax credits, serves about 9,000 students, but it’s all but dead thanks to the maneuvers of leaders like Pritzker and Gates.
The fight for school choice can no longer be about a token program. The only real solution is universal choice. Open it up to every single kid in Illinois.
Think that’s crazy? They’ve just done it in Iowa. In Indiana. In Arizona. In Florida. Educational freedom, we call it.
But the only way for that to happen is for parents to match their overwhelming enthusiasm for school choice in polling and surveys with a similar drive during elections.
To start, Illinoisans can educate themselves about their neighborhood schools and local districts by checking out Wirepoints’ School District Report Cards. Here’s the report card for Harlan Community Academy High School, the school Stacy Davis Gates’ son would have gone to had he attended his public school.
And if you haven’t seen our comprehensive critique of Illinois’ education system and want to learn more, see these key pieces:
- Chicago Public Schools fails its Hispanic students: Only 17 of every 100 read at grade level. – Wirepoints Special Report
- Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system – Wirepoints Special Report
- New U.S. Census data: Illinois education spending soars while outcomes flatline – Wirepoints Special Report
- Administrators over kids: Seven ways Illinois’ education bureaucracy siphons money from classrooms – Wirepoints Special Report
- How many grades behind are Chicago Public Schools’ students?
- Six facts Gov. Pritzker doesn’t want you to know about Illinois’ 2022 Report Card
Appendix.
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.
The taxpayers are getting ripped off repeatedly year after year and their naïveté is shocking.
Attended Catholic schools in the 80s. The nuns provided an exceptional college preparatory education with no more than a crucifix affixed to the wall and chalk in hand.
More resources is not the problem with CPS.
In the 50’s and 60’s the nuns also had some painful persuasion apparatus. Paddle boards (some with holes) and rulers and hands the size of the Hulks. Get out of line and suffer immediate consequences.
Fred, those were the days. Nobody thought of Catholic school education as a daycare — and no meals were provided, nuns never went on strike or got pregnant or got snowed in as the concent was right next to the school.
The whole system is shameful.
I wish they would send some of those funds to some of our downstate districts. With much less funding our schools have such better results. Look at it as a way of spending money more efficiently. A good source for the funds would be to lay off Chicago teachers and hire cheaper baby sitters instead.
A better way to spend and save money too…a true win win situation
Taxpayer who pays the salaries for the education system: Your failure to achieve any of the objectives for which you were hired is a disgrace. These results need to be improved. Teachers: You just don’t understand how hard our job is. And anyway, it’s your fault because you are the one who hired me. Stop playing the victim and hand over more money! It’s a good thing we made damn sure that you can’t hire anybody else to replace us. I’m outta here, have to go read Gender Queer to my class of 3rd graders. Anyone who works in the… Read more »
Democrats like stupid people. They’re much easier to control.
And as you can see from the headlines the Illinois media has its share of stupid people too
To put a human spin on the literacy problem, soon to be premiered is the HBO documentary BS High about the Bishop Sycamore High School (sic) in Ohio which was essentially a football team formed by a con man. ESPN with no due diligence televised their game, at which point the whole con was exposed. Fraud everywhere – poor people’s lives ruined. Lots of angles here, including a misplaced priority on football, but this gigantic con doesn’t happen with even a moderately educated population. I do feel for the kids involved. This is the human side of having an illiterate… Read more »
BJ, there’s nothing wrong with CPS that a few thousand nuns couldn’t fix. Now grab a shovel and head to St. Adalberts in Niles…..
Especially tough nuns like this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujxDA9VsQG4
Giddy, that movie was a classic. Set in Chicago. That nun was still ticked off a Jake 20 years later!
In Union/Democrat run schools, kids learn nothing useful.
Instead they learn
— how to hate America
— how to hate white people — especially white men
— how to get a sex change
— how stealing from the store or carjacking is all justified reparations
and most importantly
— that police are the enemy and that crime is a right wing social construct
Public schools are woke madrasas.
As we have been informed recently by Mayor Nimrod, schools will not be evaluated based on performance. Instead it is how much has been invested in the school system that will be the key metric of success. Clearly he knew these results before the rest of us. He will now celebrate the great success of literally flushing money down the toilet that is CPS.
Yes, CTU/Brandons measure of success is the same as CTUs—it’s the $ spent to correct “the historic systemic dis-investment in black communities” and not test score results. Then the tricky part for fake progressive left is that the $ spent go into the pockets of majority white/upper-income/guaranteed deal CTU members and not put in the hands of the low income parents in “systemic dis-investment in black communities” to choose a school where they might have a chance to get a great education.