By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
Critics are right to call out Evanston Township High School (ETHS) for its segregation of minority students from white students in several Advanced Placement classes. The move is likely unconstitutional and even if challenges to reverse it fail it flies in the face of decades of civil rights actions to bring students together.
But as bad as the segregation attempts are, they pale in comparison to the district’s wholesale treatment of minorities. Evanston’s blacks and Hispanic students are passed along from grade to grade, and on through graduation, despite the fact the overwhelming majority never learn to read or do math at grade level. Ninety percent of black ETHS students graduated last year even though only 23 percent and 12 percent were proficient on the SAT in reading and math, respectively. Hispanic results were only slightly better.
Look at the results below to see the district’s hypocrisy on full display. Administrators blame “white-supremacy” and racism to justify those segregated classes, but at the same time they expect little-to-nothing from most of their minority students. That, in one of the nation’s most progressive, DEI-focused school districts that spends over $33,000 per student.
Just passing them along
Evanston officials embrace one of the most destructive policies in education: They push students from grade to grade even when they’re not ready. A look at every single grade in Evanston’s school system shows how administrators never care to ensure black students are proficient in reading before advancing them to the next grade.
It starts at third grade, the most crucial for students being able to learn in later years. In Evanston’s feeder schools, just 19 percent of black third-graders students could read at grade level. Nevertheless, they are passed along.
It’s what happens all the way through high school. Just 23 percent of 11th-grade black students can read at grade level. There’s no change for Hispanic students either – they’re stuck at 25-30 percent across the years.
The hypocrisy of administrator policies reach a crescendo in high school, where the district ends up graduating 90 percent of minority students despite their rock-bottom proficiencies.
As we noted above, money can’t be the issue. The district spends, all-in, a whopping $33,000 per student. ($123 million in total expenditures divided by an enrollment of 3,700).
And it can’t be the teachers. At ETHS, virtually all teachers have been rated “excellent or proficient” every year since 2018 – just like across the rest of the state.
Nor can it be the lack of a big-time, executive leadership at the district. Last year’s superintendent, Eric Witherspoon, made $395,000 in base salary. And the new superintendent, Dr. Marcus Campbell, is getting $275,000.
The bigotry of low expectations strikes again
It’s no surprise Evanston administrators are resorting to gimmicks like segregating classes. Instead of focusing on raising expectations and improving reading and math curriculums, officials continue to blame racism as a way to scapegoat their own failures.
Consider their statement in 2017: “There is a persistent and unacceptable opportunity gap for students of color in District 65. The District’s leadership team attributes the racial predictability of achievement and disciplinary outcomes to institutional racism, a huge problem that can only start to be solved by acknowledging the history of white supremacy in Evanston/Skokie Schools.”
The hundreds of students who graduate every year neither reading nor math proficient are the victims of those excuses.
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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.
It is like they are telling the minority children that we do not expect them to do good. Shameful racism.
well said
So, for us in the cheap seats… Dr. MLK advocated and devoted his life to INTEGRATION and equal standards and measures and equal opportunity, correct? And these RUBES in Evanston are arguing for segregation and inequality? God love Evanston… There isn’t an issue they can fall on the correct side of…
Very interesting and educational. The residents of Evanston have got to come together and fix this. Bad for all of us if they think this is an acceptable education. There is no excuse for segregation today and no reason is good enough to pass someone to the next grade if they are failing their current grade. Sounds like they are proud and unapologetic of the mess they’ve made of everything in their educational system.
Marie, living here in Evanston I can state that the vast majority residents of Evanston are so “woke” that they think this is real dandy idea… District 65 is a royal mess, and things are only getting worse. However, a good number of well – informed parents are simply switching their kids to private schools… and another issue is low participation in school board (and other local Evanston) elections…
What does woke have to do with this district 65 has always been like this even before your woke comment and just say white families are putting their kids in private school and please tell them why … Majority White people in Evanston are racist don’t care about any other race in this town and you can clearly see this if living in Evanston….. 30 yr resident
If the administrators name white supremacy as the root of the problem, then I take it that all of the white people in the Evanston school system, including the school board, are going to resign? Even if they’re lefties, they still need to resign because of their unconscious bias, which I’m told that ALL white people have, kind of like original sin. Further, since white supremacy is so pervasive and corrosive, it must be excised from the entire school system. This logically means removing ANY stain of whiteness that touches or has touched the schools. The logical conclusions being: -all… Read more »
You forgot English is the language of whiteness too – they should stop teaching or even speaking English. And since English uses latin letters – they should also start using a different language with a different alphabet. While I’d normally suggest Ukranian, that’s whiteness too, may I suggest Palestinian Arabic? Numbers are OK however because they were invested by Indians. An Algebra is OK too because it’s arabic: Al-Jebra. For real, that’s the origin.
Or go full woke like the CTU has and use Ebonics. At least the union bosses will understand.
I hope your young I really do because of your grown and still racist your mom did a piss poor job of raising you and your dad ignored it or maybe he was deep in it
Sounds good! We just need to take all lefty policies to their logical end, and hold the lefties accountable for everything they say and do.
Lefty school board says white supremacy is the problem, OK, then here’s the logical ending if they REALLY believe what they’re saying.
My guess is the idea of a school board may have originated in a predominantly white area… And, arguably, isn’t the idea of democracy something that originated in ancient Greece and then Rome… That’s gotta go too…
The new plantation “Massas” democrats, are pleased
Too bad. Evanston, decades ago, was one of the top school systems in Cook County. How the mighty have fallen. THUD!
I was a student at ETHS in the 60s when we were considered a #1 high school. I’m ashamed to call this school my alma mater. Huge step backward.
That’s a lie do you research
Hmmm, ‘separate but equal’ public education was ruled illegal in the South where I was raised. Then the Northern Liberals forced busing on us because public schools were segregated and kids were effectively in ‘separate and unequal’ public schools. Looks like ETHS has fully embraced ‘separate and unequal’, but cleverly doing the ‘separate and unequal’ grade by grade inside the public school and cloaking it in a sewer load of DEI for legitimacy. Meanwhile, the teachers union just chuckles on their way to the bank. Oh the hypocrisy of the Leftist Democrats – these people are evil for what they… Read more »
Since the liberals now like segregation, let’s go back to it full bore. Can we please return to separate bathrooms, separate water fountains, and separate lunch rooms? That actually worked out pretty well back in the day.
sarcasm is lost on some people
Spot on JPM. Let’s include housing too and keep the riff raff on the other side of tracks!
I think it’s a great idea. Then when the dumbed down fail miserably on SAT tests, the same one ALL students take, watch the administration try and backpedal while wiping the egg off of their faces.
Nah, they are incapable of shame. They will just scream that the tests are racist.
Special Ed students are often excused from standardized testing, which then removes those hypothetical but likely lower scores to be magically disappeared from district performance scores and district rankings. Poof!
Many public school districts, by means of ham-fisted “progressive” policies and procedures, demonstrate a pervasive low-achievement expectation bias towards their black and brown students. (East Asian students are viewed as grade-grubbing AP-honor students, so mostly ignored, and Middle-Eastern students as low-maintenance frequently AWOL academically mediocre pupils.) Evanston School District demonstrates this low expectation mode, by implementing separate classes for black students, assuming that few, if any black students are AP material. They are ignoring British educational statistics, which indicate the academically strongest group of British state school students are classified as “children of African immigrants”. In England, students of African-immigrant… Read more »
If skin color correlates to academic achievement then students should ask to be educated in Chinatown.