FOX 32 Chicago joined Wirepoints at our press conference in front of Pilsen’s Benito Juarez High School, where only 70 out of 1,700 students can read at grade level, to report on Wirepoints’ new special report: “Chicago Public Schools fails its Hispanic students: Only 17 of every 100 read at grade level.”
Watch FOX 32’s coverage here: https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/advocacy-groups-criticize-chicago-public-schools-hispanic-students
And check out your CPS school or district’s student outcomes in Wirepoints’ School District Report Card Database.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Wirepoints’ Chicago School Report Card Database
- Illinois lawmakers face two choices on Invest in Kids Act: support schoolchildren or support teachers unions
- Chicago Public Schools wants help with massive deficits despite billions in federal aid, plummeting enrollment
- 50 years of failure: Norman Lear’s ‘Good Times’ first criticized Chicago’s policy of automatically passing students in 1974. It’s still happening today.
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.
And yet the parents refuse to move out of Chicago and send their kids to better schools.
Parents are very much responsible for this failure by holding out false hope that CPS will improve.
The politicians and teacher’s union are getting 100% of what they want. An electorate too stupid to question anything they do. None of the students can read and understand the laws being passed, plus they have the inability to do simple math so they cannot question the financial burden being placed upon them thru government expenditures and taxes. Stalin and Mao would be proud!
I saw coverage of this on ABC7 News at 6. Your comms team is doing a good job.
That’s Kathleen Murphy. We love her.
Hmm, I don’t think Pilsen was like that when it was a Bohemian community……
And teachers unions existed. What happened to degrade academic performance?
Why is the chitty spending some of the highest money per student and getting the lowest results. Where I work if you do not get results you get fired. It is that simple.
Then, apparently the work there is not all that complex in terms of the number and variety of factors that determine the quality of your output. Jobs that have a very narrow, controllable, identifiable set of such factors can have easy evaluation processes compared to those that don’t. Numerous jobs are more complicated for assigning blame when poor results occur.
Do you really believe that there is no complexity in the world outside the classroom? That outside the classroom, people in complex jobs are not held responsible for their performance?
I didn’t say my remarks apply literally everywhere, but apparently it applied where you worked and for those who had your sort of job. You’re expanding that observation far beyond reason.
Maybe Prozac is a neurosurgeon or spine surgeon. Who knows?
P.S. How’s my GoFundMe page for my Colossus of Freddy statue? Hopefully you have collected at least $3 or $4.00 by now. LOL! Good Day.
Freddy, I’m nowhere near being a brain surgeon LOL, but that is kind of my point. I can’t be a brain surgeon, but that doesn’t mean that the job is too complex and nobody can do it. It would just mean that I’m in the wrong job.
Are you implying education dollars might be better spent outside the school system? Because we seem to hit the limit on what we can achieve within the school walls. Might be time to redefine what an “education dollar” truly is.
i didn’t intentionally mean what you’ve said in your first sentence, Freddy, but I have no problem at all with the concept of spending education dollars to better effect. Yes, in my estimation we need to get our act together nationwide on this matter and spend such money where the pay-off is more likely and less so where its largely wasted in terms of pay-off value. But, “pay-off” value is an arguable concept in that disabilities and cultural differences tend to reduce academic performance for many students along with the students’ own willingness to enthusiastically participate in what’s offered. “You… Read more »
True. If we were suddenly transported to interior China as kids where they only spoke Mandarin how would most of us do on tests? I would be at zero but that does not make me illiterate. How would the students do if they were taught in Spanish by teachers proficient in the language? Acclimating to our culture and language must be difficult for the kids since at home they still speak their native language. I see it all the time at stores where parents all speak Spanish to the kids. Transitioning from Spanish to English language should be considered first… Read more »
They speak and read Spanish as poorly as they read English. Their parents likely have about 5th or 6th grade educations. Their parents are not teaching them to read Spanish, only speak some regional dialect… Moreover, the current trend is to redefine assimilation as ‘racist’ and ‘discriminatory’ and that English only instruction in schools is harmful because it is designed to strip latinks of their culture and their heritage… https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/06/latino-americans-lose-spanish-fluency/10451602002/ ‘It makes you question your identity’: What it means for Latinos to lose Spanish fluency While the number of Latinos who speak Spanish at home has grown, the share has… Read more »
100% correct. The Office of Lang and Culture is 99% Hispanic. Those who aren’t, are white apologists. All decisions being made in that department reflect all of the attitudes you mentioned above. Any other language group is an inconvenience to be ignored. Asking for help for our Ukrainian refugee students has been met with silance from that depr. The promotion of a utopia in which all Hispanic students are biliterate (or better yet, Spanish dominant, who needs English after all?) drives hiring practices, curricular choices, etc. A person from OLCE told our admin after an „audit” (read: witchhunt), that our… Read more »
I’d say you “get it,” Freddy. To EXPECT CTU teachers in particular to be able to get academic performance results from their students that are even near average as adults would see it is likely unrealistic given the problems you’ve mentione and even those you haven’t such as the influence–positive or negative–of their parents, neighborhood and friends. If any one of those three influencers is is neutral to schooling being important, that’s a general clue that things for that student won’t often go well in terms of academic performance. If all three of those influencers are negative in general terms… Read more »
The downvoters here surely must have simply evaluated jobs. If so is likely because what makes-or-breaks each job holder’s performance has only a few and quickly identifiable factors affecting it, all of which are clearly somewhat controllable by the job holder. Good for you, but implying any other job is equally simply evaluated and done in a manor which is clearly somewhat controllable by the job holder is way too simplistic.
The bottom line is that these kids can’t read or do math. We cannot sit back and just let it go on until we have a society of illiterates, while complaining that the job is too complex. We need ideas, not whining. I’ve pointed out before that society has managed to teach kids to read for centuries if not millenia. It’s not an insurmountable problem.
Yes, but that will take a generation of students to make that hard-nosed standard truly sink in to the daily-attitude mindset of the students and parents without total chaos resulting against it. You don’t seem to get the everyday reality of the point I tried to make. First, this idea of yours has to start in first grade and follow those students ever after. That’s because many (and maybe will not adjust successfully midstream to a situation where ingrained prior poor attitudes and behaviors are now totally insufficient for their form of “class participation.” Rather than reform many will become… Read more »
When the team does poorly, the coach gets the sack, not the whole team. Unfortunately, the CPS/CTU don’t see it that way.
If they did you’d have no people at all aspiring to be a teacher at all. They’d consider the expense and unpaid time in getting they’re not sufficient for the job risk and high probability of job dismissal. Would you apply for a job where in general your personal financial security is on the line with hen you see so many teachers in your school being routinely fired? I doubt you’d want that sense of insecurity.
I’ve had jobs that required longer, year round hours and paid far less that poor performance was a reason for dismissal. To have a few students that can’t, or won’t, learn is one thing. To have a large number of them leave school functionally illiterate while receiving glowing accolades and ratings from other educators is quite another.
Yes, but you and so many others want to think there’s a “magic button” someone in authority can press to make it all turn around to your liking overnight. I don’t think it exists. Educators are alike nearly everyone else you’ll encounter and individually fall somewhere on a wide range of characteristics in terms of intelligence, educational background, commitment to their job, happiness doing it, etc. Some are great, many are presumably satisfactory, some struggle meeting the numerous job and personal interaction expectations, and some can’t wait to quit to do something less stressful. I know what you want: literally… Read more »
James – indeed the problems far from mono-causal and challenging. But you are reasonable and can’t possibly think that with some of the highest per pupil expenditures in the nations the results are remotely acceptable. You are familiar with education. What would happen if students were compelled to stay in 3rd grade until the achieved 3rd grade level work before being passed on? The same for let’s say, 6th and 9th grades? Again, what would happen is CPS enforced this kind of scheme?
Most here seem to want to take the more adult-like attitude that you shouldn’t pass, let’s say 85-90% students when only maybe 15-25% are at grade level. That probably makes sense to you, and it does to me on a superficial-thinking level as well. After all, if the students get the overall attitude that they will pass and even graduate without really meeting acceptable performance and behavioral levels why should they bother to do—well almost literally anything the teacher has asked of them? I agree with that, but I also know the reverse is equally true, too. If the standards… Read more »
It’s partially related to the definition of ‘grade level’ which I’ll get to in a minute. The precipitous decline is performance can be traced back to ONE EVENT: The introduction of common core curriculum throughout the state. The state was IIRC 79% proficient in reading and 86% in math in 2012 the last year we had ISAT testing. In the past, I’ve linked to articles dating back to 2013 showing that the year they introduced common core, test scores immediately dropped A LOT and there’s been a steady decline every year since, exasperated by the ‘rona school closures. School data… Read more »
Of course common core was a failure. If reading the article below doesn’t make your blood boil, there’s something wrong with you. The state educators that introduced common core should be IMPRISONED and lose their pensions be donated to the now defunded school choice program. This makes me SO angry. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2013-10-31-ct-met-school-report-card-scores-20131031-story.html October 31, 2013 llinois grade school test scores plunge — especially in poor communities By Diane Rado and Alex Richards, Chicago Tribune reporters The push to toughen state exams for Illinois grade school students triggered widespread drops in 2013 scores, with hundreds of schools in some of the state’s… Read more »
As you can read in the article, the journalists don’t really want to blame common core, they only blame the raising of the standards, but in a round about way, they say that the introduction of 100% common core topics into the ISAT tests is what actually caused the decline, not the raising of the test scores. Common core was introduced in 2010 but test scores stayed steady with the non-common core test, but in 2013, when they went 100% common core tests, raised the standard, and everywhere except Northbrook bombed the test. These educators all belong in prison, every… Read more »
I’m not at all knowledgable on that topic, so I’ll take your word for the truth of all of it and—surprise, surprise—even your emotional take on it. Let me just say that teaching at its best is essentially much like art in that it reflects the attitudes, talents, short-comings, and knowledge of the ones who do It. If Common Core is sort of a ready-made preset way to teach that may work well in some cases, but it’s likely no guarantee of good student performance. As always, some will “get it” and some won’t due to various reasons. It’s worth… Read more »
Here’s some info on Common Core
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/common-core-has-failed-now-what/
And of course Bill Gates was involved if this article is correct
https://www.pacificresearch.org/common-core-has-failed-americas-students/
https://www.educationnext.org/common-core-has-not-worked-forum-decade-on-has-common-core-failed/
The education-industrial complex refuses to acknowledge that common core has been an absolute, unmitigated disaster that has destroyed an entire generation of learning. They’ll lie to your face and say it’s working great! They have such a short term memory that they no longer even remember what it was like to teach in 2009 before common core was introduced, when statewide math proficiency was 86% and reading was 79%. That’s what statewide proficiency was on the last ISAT test in 2012 before the test switched to common core in 2013. The entire world has gone crazy because the nuttiest crazy… Read more »
Aristotle had no difficulty teaching Greek to the barbarian Alexander the Great and his future generals using parchment, clay tablets and a copy of the Iliad hand written on parchment. It’s not that difficult. I could ramble on forever, but it’s completely obvious to anyone paying that: Common core is a whacky, unintuitive way to teach and learn, and confuses children; 2. Common core intentionally removes parents from helping their children learn, because the curriculum is so whacky and different than what every generation before them for 100 years has learned; 3. The state arrogantly believed that common core would… Read more »
It’s partially related to the definition of ‘grade level’ which I’ll get to in a minute. The precipitous decline is performance can be traced back to ONE EVENT: The introduction of common core curriculum throughout the state. The state was IIRC 79% proficient in reading and 86% in math in 2012 the last year we had ISAT testing. In the past, I’ve linked to articles dating back to 2013 showing that the year they introduced common core, test scores immediately dropped A LOT and there’s been a steady decline every year since, exasperated by the ‘rona school closures. School data… Read more »
Well, I’m clearly a dinosaur on this whole topic. On a personal level I’m totally aghast at what you’ve written. I have only a very grandfatherly acquaintance with the whole idea. All I can say is that we monitor the progress of our two grandchildren of school age, one to be a high school senior this fall and the other a freshman. They seem to be doing really well in school from all evidence and are responsible people as well. They attend suburban schools in the Chicago suburbs and have two well educated parents who are solidly middle-class successful there.… Read more »
You’re retired and likely retired before common core came into existence. So you cannot be blamed. But I’m not the only person outside of the educational system saying this stuff. These aren’t novel ideas I made up in my head. Common core has been a disaster for most children in the state, and the evidence is everywhere.
Your first sentence is accurate for me and explains my poor knowledge level re common core. Again, I am neutral to your attitude on it, and I can easily see your frustrated fixation on that topic. As is ever true in education and politics “this, too, shall pass.”