By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
Spry Community Links High School, in the Heart of Little Village in Chicago, says its vision is to “provide a challenging and supportive environment…to enable our students to succeed in the 21st century.” Number one on the school’s focus list? “Increasing reading and math scores to or above grade level.”
But a look at state data that tracks reading and math scores for each Illinois school reveals two frightening facts about Spry. Not a single one of its 88 kids at the school can read at grade level. It’s the same for math. Zero kids are proficient.
Spry is one of 30 schools in Illinois where not a single student can read at grade level. Twenty-two of those schools are part of the Chicago Public Schools and the other eight are outside Chicago.
The failure list in math is even longer. There are 53 schools statewide where not one kid is proficient in math.
The absolute failure to teach even a single child to read and do math in so many schools is yet another indictment of the state’s educational system. At Wirepoints, we covered in detail the failures of Illinois education across the state in Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system.
The data comes straight from the Illinois State Board of Education.
This column focuses on schools where zero percent of kids are able to read or do math. But we could have just as easily looked at the 622 schools where only 1 out of 10 kids or less can read at grade level. That’s a whopping 18 percent of the state’s 3,547 schools that tested students in 2022.
And only 1 out of 10 kids or less can do math at grade level in 930 schools…that’s more than a quarter of all schools in the state.
Defenders of the current system are sure to invoke covid as the big reason for the low scores. But a look at the 2019 numbers show that the reading and math numbers were only slightly better than they are now.
Take Spry, for example. Just 2 of the school’s 127 students in 2019 could read at grade level before the pandemic. In math, zero students were proficient.
The failure isn’t about money, either. Data from the Illinois State Board of Education shows spending at Spry was already at $20,000 per student before the pandemic. Today it spends $35,600.
What’s really incredible is that many of these schools are rated “commendable” by the Illinois State Board of Education. That’s the 2nd-highest of four “accountability” ratings a school can receive.
Not a single one of the 113 students at Sandoval Sr High School can read or do math at grade level. And yet the school is “commendable.”
Same with Ralph Ellison Chicago International Charter School. Over $24,000 spent on each of its 172 students. Labeled “commendable.” And none of the students are proficient in either reading or math.
In a sane world, schools that don’t and can’t teach a single student the most basic of skills would be shut down. But here, they carry on…the system thrives while students wither.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system
- Unwed births, illiterate children and black-on-black crime: What Chicago’s mayoral candidates ignore
- Elgin’s Tony Sanders promoted to Illinois State Superintendent, though just 2 in 10 students in his district can read at grade level.
- New CPS data: Mayor Lightfoot, Chicago Teachers Union continue to keep dozens of empty, failing schools open
- Six facts Gov. Pritzker doesn’t want you to know about Illinois’ 2022 Report Card
PPF and the likes of him are doing a fine job.
Some of the highest cost of education and some of the worst results. The education system is set up for adults to get pay checks, benefits, and huge pensions. Education is not even on the list. The system is broken and cannot be fixed. The greed of the unions has destroyed the quality of education and life for most everyone. But not to worry, if the live in the Chitty of Chicago they can always become a criminal.
and let’s not forget it is all the will of the people on election day
Why do people assume that “it’s the will of the people by voting” absolves those who have produced this disaster from any responsibility?
It’s not “the will of the people” if the people are not being represented as they expected they would.
The problem is that in the age of identity politics and opponent bashing nobody is voting for what any candidate will accomplish overall – just against an allegation levied at their opponent. And the candidates that get in as a result don’t care about the people that elected them, they just get to work on their own personal agenda.
I didn’t vote for a single elected official in Chicago so let’s not say it’s the will of the people. It’s not one monolithic voting block voting 100% for these failed policies.
Yes, because there are no fraud issues with elections in the US…everyone voted for the mess we’re in.
But here’s the kicker: for the open, brazen, and blatant Democrat theft of the 2020 election in a few pivotal precincts in the swing states in the dead of night, our enlightened federal prosecutors and public-school-educated Grand Jurors are about to indict….the Republican!
Bananas for your republic, Senor?
Wow. You still believe the electuons are legit?
“There’s a sucker born every minute.” – P. T. Barnum
True but when your choices are dog poo or dog poo, what are you going to do??
Oh lawd you are not knowledgeable! Talk to a teacher.
These Teachers?
https://mobile.twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1624175710272118792?cxt=HHwWkICz-YDNnYotAAAA
Elementary school teacher shows off “pride library” in her classroom including books about ze/zir pronouns and the idea that doctors “assign” a gender and kids can be transgender. This is what teachers are focusing on in your kid’s schools.
There are individual teachers, schools and school districts whom conspire to “transition” our childred, psychologically, chemically and medically without parental permissions nor even notification. It looks exactly as though .6% of our population is attempting to create a full generation of hermaphrodites. Efforts are made to “transition” our children as young as pre-school and day care level. This is “Grooming” at the deepest level. These are children. Medical, chemical and surgical efforts should not be applied until that individual comes of age. Nothing should be done to or with a child without full, clear and legal agreement of the parents.… Read more »
They wont become hermaphrodites tho, only sterile. Which, I guess, was the goal in the first place.
You mean an ‘activist’?
And they get passed on to the next grade. Teachers just do not give a damn.
Teachers are not allowed to retain students, no matter how good the reason. We are EXTREMELY frustrated by that. It is criminal that we are forced to give passing grades to kids who are in fifth grade and cannot read above a first grade level. The latest push is to not give out so many C’s! (D’s and F’s are already forbidden)
CPS teacher, the above scenario you’ve delineated will only continue if teachers, as a group, comply with this type of unethical directive; am I correct?
Teachers are being harassed about this and parents don’t care as long as it looks good to them! Ask the Board and districts!
Nobody gets elected to the Board without teacher union support. Make better choices.
Not necessarily Pamela. As a retired educator (math) in a school district with no tenure structure, I was threatened with non renewal of my annual contract if I didn’t pass 80% of my students. I was threatened by parents to “take this up with the Bd of Ed”, if I didn’t increase their child’s grade. I offered before and after school tutoring. It wasn’t until I literally showed the positive correlation between my grades and national test scores for the same math topics that threats from the administration decreased. Teachers often have to fight parents and administrators in order to… Read more »
Who is calling the shots here and demanding passing grades and no D’s or F’s? What is the chain of command?
Principals demand it so the school’s stats look good to those above them – network chiefs. Network chiefs pressure the principals for nice looking numbers so they look good to the powers that be downtown. The schools I’ve taught in recently both work like this, so I assume “no D’s or F’s” comes from the top and has for many years. The pressure to reduce the number of C’s is new this year.
It has nothing to do with Teachers! Ask the BOARD why they are making it hard to fail students who come to school to do nothing and their parents do even less!
Today, teachers can’t even give students zeros for a grade or msg if assignments are not completed or turned in! Everyone blames teachers, but poop rolls downhill!
Teachers are too busy promoting social ideologies over education in the modern system. They chose an easy job that lets them feel superior to the masses but they are just a product of the society that they chose to babysit.
Smart people with smart kids have already opted out and moved into more select neighborhoods where they control what happens.
It’s far, far from an easy job. And no, no one I work with “feels superior to the masses”. Most of us really enjoy working with kids and loathe the nonsense that keeps getting pushed on us from above. For example, last year the new skyline curriculum debuted and I was suddenly being required to read my kindergarten students a book about a little girl who decides she’s really a boy! (When Aidan Became a Brother) The three K teachers in my building took one look at it and said, “oh no” and quietly skipped that text. Don’t assume teachers… Read more »
The education system is the textbook definition of a closed system. No outsiders allowed- the principals, administrators, and union leaders are mostly former teachers. No school board members get elected without teacher union support.
The only way any of this changes is if teachers get on board with true reform. So why do they keep electing the union leaders and board members who push the crazy?
Wow…just another clueless loser bashing the educators who’ve put up with more shit than you could imagine and the blows haven’t stopped yet. Get a clue or zip it because you sound ignorant.
I’ve been told repeatedly that actually “coming to school” is not very common these days. Even if they do actually show up, they rarely attend classes but just jack around with their friends.
People do things their bosses check. Watch, voters will only whine, but take no action to hold the school accountable, just like Catholics won’t hold the church hierarchy accountable for its global sexual perversions.
It ain’t unions doing the destroying.
Yep it’s the unions along with their purple haired nose ringed gestapo wanting to change the way your children think
Cognitive Dissonance is not way to go through life.
The system as it is today is broken by DESIGN. That is why it “can’t be fixed.” Mandate universal school vouchers payable to whoever teaches the child, including parents and even self-taught students (put the funds in an education trust parents can’t touch). Create a system similar to Uber for matching students to classes, topics, even single lessons. Teachers get paid only when the child demonstrates proficiency for the lesson/topic/class in controlled testing centers. All grade school courses standardized for proficiency testing, all political groups get veto power to exclude political nonsense from course materials. All parents, students, teachers authenticated… Read more »
Everyone search “silent weapons for quiet wars book” & allll of your questions will be answered.
So what happened ? Did the teachers get dumber or the children? Or both. Which also would mean the parents got dumber too.
What has changed in Illinois? Did all the intelligent people leave or die?
Parents are relying on a screwed up woke soft on discipline over-regulated monopoly union / monopoly government public education system (duopoly) with massive pension debt, just for starters. Is there a furry in your neighborhood school? Tampons in the boys room? Girls on boys sports teams and vice versa? High school girls wearing skimpy clothes? More fights in the hallways and playgrounds? More kids that cannot peak or are learning English? More kids on a wide array of mind altering substances? More parents on fentanyl? Illegal aliens including gotaways and sex trafficked kids? Two years of masking and remote learning?… Read more »
https://cwbchicago.com/2023/03/17-year-old-charged-with-carjacking-man-in-lakeview-robbing-and-kidnapping-others.html
https://cwbchicago.com/2023/02/15-year-old-robbed-man-at-knifepoint-inside-loop-parking-garage.html
https://cwbchicago.com/2023/02/federal-helicopter-chicago-cops-team-up-to-catch-16-year-old-carjacker-in-minutes.html
https://cwbchicago.com/2023/02/55-chicago-teen-shot-a-man-while-awaiting-trail-for-2-felony-gun-cases-prosecutors-say.html
I know what happened. School employees have replaced day-to-day activity with woke activity.Schools see indoctrinating students in wokeness as their primary role. Schools believe educating students is a distraction. And when school employees spend all their times going woke, there’s just no time left for education. I see it in my district. The board and administrators spend all their time injecting Equity into every aspect of the school, from school lunches, to honors classes, to the sports team and beyond. Of course, virtually no one is actually paying attention to anything else, except for wokeness, and the entire system starts… Read more »
unfathomable. the dumbing down of education is corporate mandate from 100 years ago. amd the corporations appeased by capitalism have risen to psuedo soverign that dictatele policy to municipalities and governments for the promise of jobs. They dont need shackles if the minds of your children are destroyed
for anyone who wants a clear definitive answer and reason for this.. just search, silent weapons for quiet wars book. & There’s your answer.
Need a race breakdown
Most, if not all, are probably blacks.
Can’t fix stupid.
We should demand 100% perfection from teachers, just as we demand 100% perfection from cops. Cop can handle things perfectly 99% of the time and fail the other 1% and people will still say that’s not good enough.
With teachers, their job is to educate students. Teaching only 99% of their students to be proficient isn’t good enough. Some of these teachers are failing 100% of the time and yet keep their job. Why is that?
Look For The Union Laaaaable when you’re destroying a child’s future. On purpose.
And it will only get worse now that the fools of Illinois voted in Union Totalitarian control into the Constitution.
And everyone in this school system still has a job WHY?
Unions. Communist Unions.
True, but communist unions is actually a redundancy.
Vouchers
Proof yet again it’s never been about the education but all about the money.
Please read this testimony from a long time CPS high school teacher who just quit due to gender ideology nonsense. I dealt with this at the K level, in a too poor to be gender-woke school. The three of us K teachers quietly skipped reading the trans book to the class. The pressure is exponentially worse in a high-performing high school, as this lady outlines.
https://pitt.substack.com/p/im-a-teacher-and-i-will-not-be-complicit
Mandate universal school vouchers payable to whoever teaches the child, including parents and even self-taught children (the funds can be placed in an education trust). Watch the Democrat teacher’s unions perish.
I proved to my neighbors, friends and relatives that segregation works. Sent my two kids to private schools (typically all white or Asians) and they both got full-ride scholarships in college.
The major societal problem in America is blacks and their 55 to 75 IQ sub-Saharan mindset. The great minority of them that don’t fit that criteria I have sympathy for, the others not so much.
Chicago, Illinois, … the only place where the valedictorians and the salutatorians highest GPA’s are below 0.250.
You D?
Hahahahaha
Who cares about Math and Reading, most importantly, are they proficient in Gender Ideology, CRT/Marxism, Marijuana Horticulture, Cancel Culture and Climatology?
I actually think the new generation of teachers are too uneducated too teach and its been that way for well over 15 years. Worked with new hires in manufacturing who couldn’t read, write or do simple math. Pathetic. Very few jobs that don’t require some math skills. Not only manufacturing, but you can’t be a carpenter, or in construction or even a seamstress!
I recently went to a college (Big 10) womens BB game. I went to the concession stand and was waited on by a person about 20 yo. Cola 2.50, popcorn 2.25. I kid you not, out came the calculator. I would presume the person who waited on me was a student at this university
If you ever wondered why the crime Rate in Chicago is so high…..Just look at the school scores for reasons !!!!
I have several friends who have kids in the Donovan school system. They all know how to read, so that information is incorrect. If that information is incorrect, what about the other schools?
We are now creating a Serb ant class. No longer do we have students who aspire to send a man to the moon. We will soon have adults that can’t even work in a Macdonalds…they will be servants for those who have. Wake Up America.
We already have adults who can’t work at McD’s or anywhere else.
While the “cash registers” calculate how much you owe when they put in your order and then even calculates your change, they still often get it wrong, or cant even figure out how to run the cash register or whatever they call it now.
Many of the schools on those lists have enrollments well under 100, and several are funded to the tune of $42k+ and 56k+ per student. So let’s finally admit the union canards blaming overcrowded classrooms and lack of funding are to blame for low test scores.
Obviously, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society/ War on Poverty has been a great success. Kudos for the great parenting as well. I love the old joke, “Can’t read, can’t write, join the Air Force and become a fighter pilot!”
well….it starts in single mother households then k-12 is 96% female and they all vote donk 99% of the time. what could possibly go wrong. get rid of all these obese feminists and replace them with conservative alpha males.
But but but, freee sh…….er stuff.
The infrastructure deficit spending bill bailed out the bankrupt pension plans in defunct Dem welfare cities
I don’t understand the “school enrollment” column. Is it actually showing the total enrolled students? How can a city school have, for instance, only 28 kids enrolled?
Private schools in the system ?
It’s because of the home environment. There, I said it.
Agreed, it is hard to understand how parents do not or cannot see that their child is not learning.
i’ll help clarify that for you. single mother households dominate so before they even get to k-12 they’re brainwashed by stupidity. then of course 96% of k-12 teachers and administrations are also females who also happen to be feminists who also vote donk 99% of the time.
does that help noel?
Actually, it makes more sense when you realize that we are ordered by admin to give out “liar report cards” — although admin doesn’t call them that. D’s and F’s are effectively forbidden. Now C’s are being discouraged. A fellow 5th grade teacher was admonished for handing “too many C’s” to a class where 0 children are at grade level, and several are four years behind! She protested and was told to “give the B’s and then the students will be motivated to live up to them”! I kid you not. It’s no wonder parents don’t know — we lie… Read more »
Jesse Jackson be votin’ here. You D?
🤣
how do the illiterate & innumerate teachers get the wokeness and porn hammered in? just with pics-only cartoons I guess??
this comments blog is shyte..nothing works
the reason is their teachers cannot do math, because they cannot read..so there is that little nagging problem lmao
Blacks have an average IQ of 67. I’m surprised we can teach any of them to read.
Gorillas have an average IQ of 75. Maybe we should be teaching them instead.
UNTIL THERE IS SCHOOL CHOICE AND THE STUDENT BECOMES THE FOCUS OF EDUCATION, NOT THE TEACHERS, TEACHER’S UNION, AND LEFTISTS DEMOCRAT CORRUPTION CYCLE, NOTHING WILL CHANGE. WASH, RINSE, REPEAT. NO ONE IS HELD ACCOUNTABLE, AS THEIR GOAL IS NOT EDUCATION, BUT INDOCTRINATION AND FUNNELING MONEY TO LEFTISTS DEMOCRATS AND THEY HAVE BEEN SO VERY SUCCESSFUL IN THAT.
But they all know how to riot on command.
In the democrat communists view, they are doing a good job. The less their governed society can read or think for themselves the better they can be controlled.
Every teacher that has a student that fails to meet minimum State requirements should have his or her pay docked accordingly. That should help them keep their minds on the business they were paid to perform.
unions, diversity, democrat pols achieving their finest.
Chicago schools can blame the starting material. They don’t have much to work with.
Where are the parents? Why aren’t they reading to them or having the kids read? There are free children’s books you can get a free education on line, We have more resources available then any time in history. When schools dropped cursive I took it on. When they banned books I bought them for my kids..Wake up parents your children are your responsibility, your kids are going to be living with you forever and people will prey on them.
They never banned those books. They are not appropriate for children. Yet, somehow you were able to easily purchase these “banned books”. You are reciting the communist lies.
Since many of the parents were educated by CPS, they can’t read either. And the kids in CPS today will be the next generation of parents that get blamed for the schools’ failure to teach kids to read.
If anyone genuinely wants to improve learning (as opposed to spending $ and posing virtuously), here’s “one simple trick”: let kids repeat kindergarten. K is now the learn-to-read grade, and foundational reading skills are not really taught in first anymore. Almost all 6 yo are developmentally ready to learn to read. Many 5 yo are, but not all, particularly those with spring and summer birthdays. I’ve taught K for several years and every year the pattern is the same: the academic stars turn 6 in the fall, and those with April+ birthdays struggle. Some start to catch on at the… Read more »
Thank you for that concrete suggestion and thank you for your work.
I mentioned before- why aren’t teachers pushing for this? Of course a child must have the reading foundation before he moves to higher grades. If they do not, the teacher in the higher grades will find the job almost impossible.
And yet almost all the teacher comments on here were defensive and determined to blame “socioeconomic factors” or “the parents” rather than look at the education system to find a solution.
I honestly don’t really know. I suspect it’s because all of us have been taught that “retention doesn’t work”. Every “expert” has been repeating this since at least the 80’s, based on some studies that involved retaining older children who were already well below grade level. Of course, an extra year spent in a grade that was already above their skill level didn’t help that much long term (“didn’t work” meant retained students never performed as well as others, even after the extra year). What does not seem to have been tried is giving young children a second chance when… Read more »
Randi Weingarten is a J3W
niggers
be dumb yo
Randi Weingarten is proud. As an ex teacher friom the 1970’s the teachers union is the worst thing that ever happened to education.
But I would be remiss, if i did not mention the breakdown of the nuclear family, absent fathers and young teen mothers.
IT WILL NEVER CHANGE – no matter how much money is burned.
what aree you saying? baby momma hoe and big pimp daddy playar be not doin nuffin?
It will change when you stop throwing money at it. Those teachers need a merit system as do the kids. More you produce the better you get
Yeah but 100% of the kids know their personal pronouns so there’s that.
they can’t write them tho 🙂
Integration has been a complete failure.
Public school teachers need to be held accountable. Parents need to be held accountable too! Broken homes full of chaos are also to blame! Home life needs to be nurturing and disciplined. When parents are screwed up, the family suffers greatly. How do we fix this?
you dont. Tie off the dead flesh then cut it away.
they have achieved equity – everyone is equally ignorant
“Is our children learning?”
They is be learnding
No education, work the streets. Like parent/s.
Parents can’t read or do basic math, thus kids are screwed into life of dependence. Democrats dream citizens.
Marx demanded public schools in his communist manifesto to take down capitalism allowing communism.
The liberal teachers, probably can’t read or write at a 7th grade level either.