By: Ted Dabrowski
I drove to Joliet recently to meet two prominent businessmen deeply concerned about their city and its future. At the top of their worries was education – from the demise of Illinois’ Invest in Kids Act to the coming closure of one the city’s Catholic schools to the dismal results of the more than 20,000 students in the city’s public schools.
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. They should be deeply alarmed. Only about 20% of Joliet’s future workforce can read at grade level and it’s even worse for math. And with St. Jude School closing, along with the death of the state’s only school choice program, there are few good choices for parents looking for something better than what Joliet’s public schools offer.
Take a look at the landscape of public schools near St. Jude’s. At Sandburg, only 10% of kids read at grade level. At Thigpen, it’s 14%. Pretty much the same for Pershing and Jefferson. Even at better schools Craughwell and Heritage Trail, fewer than 40% of students are at grade level.
It’s the same story we’ve told about Peoria and Rockford and Decatur and Waukegan and Chicago… their systems are engrossed in the bigotry of low expectations.
Kids get passed along year after year even though the overwhelming percentage of students are never made proficient in reading or math. The numbers from Joliet SD 86 and HSD 204 below show that no matter the grade, the highest student proficiency ever gets is 24% in reading and 14% in math.
And ready or not, most kids in Joliet graduate anyway. Overall, just 16% of students were proficient in reading on the SAT at HSD 204 last year, and yet the district graduation rate was 83%. Joliet’s black students, of which only 7% were proficient in reading, had a graduation rate of 79%.
For those wanting to place full blame on parents for these outcomes, understand the message they get from the school system: their kids are good enough to move to the next grade year after year and, eventually, graduate.
Not to mention the state tells parents that virtually all of their kids’ teachers are “excellent or proficient,” according to the Illinois Report Card.
Parents do deserve their fair share of blame, but so, too, do the school districts. They’re more than happy to take taxpayer money – and demand even more – while delivering dismal outcomes.
Start with leadership. The Joliet area’s superintendents pull in around $200-250,000 a year to manage districts where only a quarter or less of students are proficient in math.
And when they retire, most retired superintendents and chief administrators get yearly pensions of $185,000 to $285,000, which translate into lifetime pensions of $4.8 million to $8.5 million.
Recently-retired Supt. Cheryl McCarthy finished her career at Joliet HSD 204 in 2019. She retired at 56 with a beginning pension benefit of over $220,000 a year – a result of the district increasing her salary by more than $60,000 during her last four years. She can expect $8.5 million over the course of her retirement.
And the superintendents aren’t the only ones to benefit from such generous benefits. The average pension of career teachers (30+ years) who retired in the last decade, depending on the Joliet district, are anywhere between $84,000 to $110,000.
No matter how you measure it, there’s a massive mismatch between Joliet educator compensation and the outcomes they deliver.
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With Invest in Kids dead and one of the last Catholic schools in the area closing, the grip of the public school monopoly in Joliet is tighter than ever.
I wish I had better news than that for the businessmen I met. But until Joliet’s parents demand more – school choice, for one – the city’s future is in trouble.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Mock TX, TN, AL education all you want, but Illinois spends 60-80% more per student and gets similar results
- Education fail: Not a single child tested proficient in math in 67 Illinois schools. For reading, it’s 32 schools.
- ‘Parents are our most powerful asset. We can mobilize & inspire them to fight for School Choice.’ – Wirepoints moderates discussion with Ian Rowe
- Chicago Public Schools’ twisted goal: End selective enrollment schools while keeping nearly empty, failing schools open
- RIP Norman Lear. Fifty years ago he scorned Chicago Public Schools for its failures. His criticisms still matter today.
- Illinois per student spending jumps to nearly $24K, CPS at nearly $30K.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
I’m counting the days until I won’t have neighbors like Jenny
What does attendance look like? What is the salary of the truancy officer? Is that job position effective?
Countries that ban private schools have the best education systems around. It forces the people to invest in their community and care about the schools, because that is the only option.
Do you believe every absurd meme you read on Facebook?
Nope, research it yourself Google Finland
Force: the preferred method of leftists everywhere, every time, in every situation.
Do you have a source for your claim?
America is based on free and fair markets, e.g, families aren’t ‘forced’ to send their children to the mediocre public colleges in IL
Look up how Finland does it.
Have you ever heard the phrase”comparing apples to oranges”?
Having heard leftists constantly talk about how Finland does things, I did Google Finland. It is a country with an ethnically homogenous population of about 5.5 million people. Hardly comparable to American society.
What works in Finland is not an indication of how things can be done in the US.
Is IL like Finland? Google says Finland pays their teachers much less than IL.
Gosh, what does Finland have that Joliet, IL doesn’t have? Hint: It has to do with Finland being filled with, get this, Finnish people.
Maybe our kids need to go to Finnishing schools.
Well done, James.
Lol – That’s a good one. Not my experience. Private parochial school students are always ahead of public school students. Private schools pose a level of competition that most public school teachers and administrators don’t like much. Here in Illinois I pay my property taxes and the majority of that tax is for the public school district in my area. My children went to private catholic schools through High school, so I payed both. Over $7,000 per year to the school district and never once have they had to teach, transport or feed my children and they are still inept… Read more »
It seems that the thumbs down crowd came out in full force after school was out for the day.
Rich Miller has released the thoughtless simpletons. They risk learning something on Wirepoints. Notice they don’t comment as they have nothing to offer.
… and moving these kids from grammar school to middle school to high school to college to the work force weakens the nation.
But somehow the teachers will get a raise! Only in the government monopoly sector.
Thank you for highlighting the loss of St. Jude in your article. While the loss of the Invest in Kids fund surely impacted the school, there was a plan in place to continue to make it possible for families to send their students to an excellent school. Unfortunately, the Diocese of Joliet came to the conclusion that fewer options are better.
Some of this poor performance is attributable to the changing demographics of Joliet’s students. Hispanics in the high school district have increased from 48% to 58% in the past few years, and the elementary schools have gone from 60% to 68% in the same time frame. The Illinois Report Card says that only 17% of the high schoolers are “English Learners” – so 1 in 6 students aka ILLEGALS. I find this number difficult to believe. The elementary school districts are 33% “English Learners” aka ILLEGALS. My guess is that these figures are under-reported and at some point after a… Read more »
Perhaps this factor is why Joliet, IL schools are worse than the Finnish schools Jenny upthread extols.
Perhaps.
Are you sure your data is accurate? Just the other day, a passel of educators were on the Joliet Patch backslapping and congratulating each other over what a great job they do. Also the Laraway School District is comprised of three schools. That rate of pay to a superintendent for a whopping three schools. And, slightly OT, did they ever catch up to and prosecute the Lincoln Way superintendent that was found to be embezzling money and using schools for side business, such as dogs training? It seems that whole affair disappeared.
These stats are as damning as you can find for any public agency in IL. Age 58 average retirement age for a Superintendent!? Where else does this lavish early retirement exist!? Most taxpayers in IL are having to work to age 65 and beyond.
My dentist’s company just opened another branch on the state line, but in IN. She was emphatic that it be in IN.
IL is completely unfixable. Get out if you can.
Generally, when things are going poorly, there is usually reason for hope that the next generation will do better. That hope doesn’t exist in Illinois due to each generation of graduates being more ignorant than the previous generation. Even if the public schools somehow started to drastically improve today, it would be more than a decade before most students entered the work force and positions of leadership. On the other hand, if all those new illegals arriving daily are English-speaking well-educated geniuses, problem solved.
Illinois population is as dumb as rocks.
CTU equity means ALL children should be illiterate.
Sadly, the State of Illinois is more worried about transitioning children than educating them. Joliet will have to make tough choices going forward. Good luck.
For a parent to keep a child in the public schools is child abuse. Think that’s too harsh? What would you call a parent that neglects their child’s future? Parents that care will leave Illinois. The ones that stay have put a higher value on something other than their child, or they simply just don’t care.
Illinois allows its schools to destroy young lives. That is simply evil. If you pay your taxes to support Illinois, you are supporting evil. Stop making excuses. It’s time to leave or hang your head in shame for being a part of this state.
Bingo.
Staying in Illinois is condoning the corruption and failure.