By: Matt Rosenberg
Last week a national media furor erupted after a Chicago-area news site reported 77 percent of black students in suburban Chicago’s Oak Park-River Forest High School District 200 “failed” the SAT, and that district was going to implement race-based grading. The district itself, mainstream media, and even “fact-checkers” pushed back, asserting the story was off-base.
But critics of the news item managed to miss the real story. The SAT results for District 200 are damning and the district’s approach is to engineer “equity” rather than lift all boats through increased rigor and focus. Moreover, claims that the district’s approach will not be rooted in race are disproved by the district’s own director of equity. In a January video he doubled down to make clear “racialization of assessments” will guide the district’s response to lagging mastery of core academic topics by black students. Meet the new “systemic racism.”
SAT data in the Illinois Report Card show that for District 200 black 11th graders, only 23 percent tested could meet the state’s “performance level” standard of 540 or higher on the reading SAT. Even more alarming, only 12 percent of District 200 black 11th graders taking the test met performance level on the math SAT. In both subjects, 11th grade SAT scores for whites, Hispanics, Asians, and all students were dramatically better than for black students.
Added to that, District 200’s own board meeting materials make clear that administrators are headed toward adopting new “equitable assessment practices” which might allow students to not turn in homework, to get do-overs on tests, or even to take “alternative” tests that skate around their lack of core academic skills. That’s all buried within the educrat-ese language of the slide show. We’ll show you how, in a few moments. The big takeaway: District 200 wants an escape hatch from the academic failure of black students that’s so glaringly evident in their SAT reading and math results.
Dramatic disparities by race in District 200’s SAT results: What’s to be done?
Let’s back up for a moment, in order to introduce the evidence. The first main exhibit is the OPRF High School SAT results. To see results by race, click “Demographics” and check the boxes. What you’ll find: On the 2021 SAT reading test (known as English Language Arts, or ELA) 62 percent of all District 200 students met the state benchmark of a 540 score or higher. Only 23 percent of black students met or exceeded the state benchmark in ELA on the SAT, versus 50 percent of Hispanics, 73 percent of Asians, and 75 percent of whites.
Here are the 2021 OPRF 11th grade SAT results for ELA as shown in the Illinois Report Card. To get the total percent of students meeting or exceeding the state-based “performance level” of 540 or higher, add the bright green and dark green bar subtotals together.
On the math section of the SAT, state report card data show that 52 percent of OPRF 11th graders met or exceeded the state benchmark standard versus a stunningly low 12 percent of blacks, 34 percent of Hispanics, 66 percent of whites and 70 percent of Asians.
Here are those math results, as shown in the Illinois Report Card.
What about the pre-Covid 2019 results? That might paint a different picture, right? For some students, but not much for blacks. That data showed that Hispanics did 16 points better on math pre-Covid in 2019, with 50 percent meeting the standard; and 6 points better on ELA, with 56 percent measuring up. Whites did markedly better in both subjects that year too; Asians held steady. Blacks did 4 points better on math, with 16 percent meeting the state standard, but were mired again at 23 percent for ELA.
The 2019 SAT results don’t in any way alter the real question: What will the district do, in concert with parents, to ensure that far more black and Hispanic students can master core academic skills?
The answer appears to be that District 200 administrators and elected school board members would rather paper over academic failure with rhetoric. This brings us to our second exhibit: a recent District 200 board meeting slide show about plans to reform grading.
It shows: a) the district believes “traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap;” and b) the district plans to “integrate equitable assessment practices” into all courses; and c) “…teachers are successfully exploring and implementing more equitable grading practices” already, although the district says that full implementation won’t be until the 2022-2023 school year.
Key among “more equitable grading practices” teachers are already “exploring and implementing,” the board slide shows says, are “competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book, and encouraging and rewarding growth over time.” All three are highly problematic.
“Competency-based grading” has some appeal because students can move at their own pace based on demonstrating subject mastery. However, generally, as Carla Evans of the National Center For Improving Educational Assessment notes, it does “not include whether students turned in homework (at all or on time).” Or that is at least separated out in a behavioral grade apart from academics. In addition, writes Evans, competency-based grading includes baked-in do-overs called “reassessments” which can undermine student motivation to prepare for the first assessment – and which can lead to shifting and lower mastery standards for showing knowledge and skills. That’s because “alternative assessments can be required.”
The potential is there for the process to chase the desired outcome until it is achieved rather than to hold firm to rigorous standards.
District 200’s other two “equitable grading practices” already being explored and implemented are equally problem-ridden. “Eliminating zeros from the grade book” means students who do no work, and perhaps never attend class, will still get some points toward a passing grade. Lousy work habits shouldn’t be enabled by high school administrators and teachers.
Then there’s “encouraging and rewarding growth over time.” Sounds good. But if the growth is from zero or 10 percent competency to 40 percent of needed knowledge and skills, that’s not good enough. The student will still need to be held back.
In the world of business if you fail the test the first time – or simply don’t measure up, you lose the customer. There are no do-overs.
District 200 tries to have it both ways by noting at the slide show’s end that it “will establish a philosophy of grading based on a rigorous, meaningful and evidence-based process.” In fact, that means it will rigorously adhere to an entrenched rubric of Progressive apologetics.
If you have any doubt, consider the words of the district’s Director of Equity Patrick Hardy on Zoom during the board’s January 27, 2022 board meeting. He praises the administration’s “racializing our work,” and “racialization of assessments” as key to “how do we build equitable assessments?” (From 2:13:17 to 2:13:55, here). Critics of the initial news report say “nothing to see here,” and assert there’s no mention of race in discussion of revised practices to be implemented. But here is “the racialization of assessment” being identified by a top district official as what’s already planned.
Remarkably – and still, in 2022 – most of an entire race has had its future options sharply narrowed by the systemic racism of low expectations. It’s shameful. Worse, local educators across Illinois who are facing the same problem have no real plan for change. Too many communities are content to let black academic failure fester while spouting “equity” and “structural racism” bromides as cover. That has to end.
The District 200 story touched a nerve on the Right and on The Left and set off a national bout of digital tribalism. Sadly, without a bracing intervention, the flame wars over race and “racialization” – both covert and overt – in education will only intensify while core subject mastery by black and Hispanic students continues to languish in K-12 public schools.
The problems of District 200 are the problems of K-12 school districts across the state. As a Wirepoints special report last week detailed, black, Hispanic and often white students are failing to meet basic proficiency benchmarks in reading and math from grades 3 through 11. Yet they’re socially promoted through high school and too often land in remedial English and math courses in college. Meanwhile in one Illinois public school district after another, more than 9 of 10 teachers earn official rankings of proficient or excellent.
It’s a systemic scam which shortchanges students most in need of rigorous standards and instruction so they can master core academic skills which help unlock adult success.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system
- VIDEO: Poor achievement, zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system
- Ongoing teen violence puts parenting at center stage in Chicago
- The opportunity that Chicago – and Illinois – kids need is real school choice
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.
Thanks for clarifying here what the Chicago Tribune missed by a mile. It’s kind of sad that the Tribune’s half-baked look at this situation was deemed worthy of a front-page article. Talk about dumbing down standards!
If someone told me David Duke was behind all this CRT, equity and low/no standards for class work we’re seeing all across the country I would believe it. Woke fools, black and white, are carrying out his vision beautifully. Because what they’re saying with their policies is that black students cannot complete work or compete in the classroom. Whites and blacks are just too different to get along and live and work together. So let’s do segregation and suspicion and hate and resentment and blame and…. I can’t believe anyone could actually believe this is the right thing to do.
Whatever happened to summer school, where failing students used to be sent for remedial training in order to catch up before the next term started?
What about the big money being spent on “tutors”? Big money for that in Woodstock D200, at least for online tutorial software, even though Khan Academy remains free-to-a-fraction-of-the -price of one of many different online tutoring software subscriptions ?
Ah yes, the dreaded summer school. You certainly didn’t want to end up attending summer school, especially since the buildings were not air-conditioned! Yikes, child abuse !
Following on this outstanding report from Matt Rosenberg, there is an article in today’s issue of The Federalist by August Meyrat addressing the situation in the OPRF school district. He doesn’t have the wealth of statistics that Matt provided, but does outline the consequences of critical race theory – based education. It’s worth your time.
Matt, thank you very much for diving deeper into the story. The so-called fact check that papers over the district’s actual words and deliberations is another embarrassment and failure of the local media that considers its job is to tell the “truth”–which is in fact propaganda for the far left “progressives.” You should be running the local newspapers.
Thank you, Dennis, and please continue to keep your sharply-trained eye on Chicagoland and Illinois. You did a great service to the region during your long, long tenure at the Sun-Times, on the editorial board there, and with commentary at other venues afterward. Much respect.
Look, we can attribute performance to one or a combination of three influencers… (1) Who is doing the teaching? Are the teachers competent? (2) Is the benefit of a free education being undervalued by the students and their families? (3) Can they be taught? (3) is problematic and uncomfortable to really measure… Let’s ignore it… (1) is somewhat explained… The non-minority students are performing better… Assume (3) is wrong – see (2)… (2) – Clearly there is little value, if any, placed on the BEST aspect of our society – free access to information and knowledge… Why try in school… Read more »
Freebies seldom are truely appreciated by those who receive them on an automatic repetitive basis. Free too often means “worthless” in the mind of such recipients. In most situations we have to pay for something to start appreciating that it has intrinsic value.
Exactly right. And we know clearly what the form of “payment” here is: putting in real hard work to master core academic skills, so that the diploma actually means something and the student is prepared to go to the next level. And that might very well be a well-paying blue-collar job – which will require strong basic reading and math skills; as so many positions these days do.
In the long run, the successful students are going to move on to be successful in life. The coddled ones, the ones made excuses for, given second chances and third chances, will probably get nowhere in life. This the reality. They can play all the games they want with scores etc., making their school district look better, but they’re not helping anyone whatsoever.
I agree. They are simply playing games in most cases. Putting in little-to-no effort leads to little-to-no understanding and often mindlessly copying from other students. These are the simple and typical truths behind most academic sob stories. So, predictably the results generally are unsatisfying. What a revelation! Every generation has to learn it firsthand. Most are convinced there is some easier way. Sure, being a genius is a good start.
Learning this is going on disturbs me on several levels. What is behind this? Grading for “equitable results” seems racist at the core. Low expectations. It also assures future failures once these children get out into the workforce which will create more citizens in poverty and forced to live on government handouts. Maybe someone needs to point out to the educators, in case they have forgotten, Equity is not the same as Equality. Or are teachers doing this to improve their personal performance records, making themselves look better and strengthens their Union’s standing during contract negotiations? How do we put… Read more »
Starting with the question of “who benefits” – as you do here – is always smart. And I think you are on to something. Failing a student is seen as a failure by the teacher and so yes grading is badly gamed. Failing a student on a test, quiz, or in a class, needs to be seen first as a reflection of challenges ahead. I come back to something I heard the black scholar Shelby Steele say during a Zoom forum in December 2020 featuring Rev. Corey Brooks, Robert Woodson, and the Volker brothers of Woodlawn, ex-gangbangers now working hard… Read more »
So why are black students in a wealthier district performing poorly compared to white students? Progressives in the district want to blame systemic racism & unconscious bias as the reasons. But they make these claims without evidence. If there’s a classroom of students of mixed races, all together and unsegregated, all learning from the same teacher, the same text books, the same material, all at the same time, why are black performing so much more poorly? It’s not like the teacher is teaching black kids in the classroom different material. I don’t see how systemic racism and unconscious bias can… Read more »
The only thing that would wake up the OPRF lefty parents and teachers is if the entire class was held back until all of the kids passed with real grades. Why should the white kids pass if the other kids can’t? Isn’t that equitable? No one passes until they all pass LOL. That would be funny.
You are asking for a riot here. All most low-income parents care about is that their children “graduate.” Your standards far, far surpass their standards and disrupt that automatic-graduation expectation of those parents. You and I can agree that ought to happen THEORETICALLY, but the politics involved simply will not allow it. The practical side of it is that you are asking to have the budgeting process exploded to even greatly higher levels by re-teaching massive number of students. The budgeting says “one and done.” Upholding strict learning standards is a talking point that barely matters in practical terms.
I know that’s never going to happen. But it might wake up OPRF progressive parents.
We’ve known about disparate outcomes for many years. This is nothing new. No Child Left Behind mandated widespread, across the board testing, disaggregated data by school, gender, race, income. This information has been readily available on the Illinois School report card for years as well. “The left” began in earnest with the “underfunding” argument back then as well. The truth is the CPS spends over 25,000 per child. They juke the numbers and underreport what they spend on people who do not even work with students, and have dozens of half empty facilities that drain resources. No business, or household… Read more »
I wonder how many of these failing students the district desires to “uplift” grade point average for by dumbing down curricula through race equity nonsense actually go home every afternoon and apply themselves to doing their homework, preparing for tests through study and intense reading and keeping regular hours appropriate for their age? Do the parent or parents enforce rules of behavior and establish disciplinary boundaries? Are the televisions off during study time? Or are these concepts simply outmoded and hopelessly out of date? Better to blame it all on racism I suppose than accept personal responsibility for one’s own… Read more »
I think we all know how that plays out for, perhaps, 85% of such households as a conservative estimate.
Why would they when there are no consequences for failure to do so? Everybody passes and the teachers get great reviews and raises.
These children are being set up to fail. It is truly racist to create a whole underclass of ignorant, unemployable, dependent adults. The school boards need to be fired. This is scandalous! Families need school choice vouchers. The money should follow the student out of the government school system.
How does lowering the standards help them in life? It’s a sad state of affairs!
while everyone tip toes around and plays paddy cake with whats going on,i call a spade a spade,the truth hurts ,huh!!??
yea,im gonna eat steak tonight while the welfare scumbags eat ramen noodles,boohoo,i dont care about the welfare sucking leaches
Don’t say that too loudly in church. You wouldn’t want to offend the biggest leftist ever known, would you?
you mean father phleger?!-lol
Didn’t realize God/Jesus loved abortions, hated self reliance, promoted the dissolution of the nuclear family, pushed trannies on children, sought to remove themselves from the public square, and believed man’s inalienable rights come from other men.
Either that or leftist doesn’t mean what you think it means.
I was responding to the specific comments of Thee Jabroni. Your extension isn’t germane to that particular exchange. Go be a blowhard elsewhere.
Who cares?-if the leftist parents dont care then why should we care?-a whole generation of stupid government assisted,safe space needing,easily offended,”everyone a racist” dopes,have fun with your linc cards dummies
We care because there will be huge numbers of those you just described and they will be able to vote.
It’s abundantly and sadly clear that no one is going to take any steps to actually educate the students. What a waste in so many ways.
Sadly spot on commentary. Yes too many communities and their educational systems are more concerned about addressing the buzz words of equity and racism rather than actually equipping the very students they aledge to protect with tools for successful living.
The reality is in these districts, educating students hasn’t worked, so educators have decided its better to indoctrinate them with leftist nonsense instead. Ironically, these poorly educated students are so far gone they can’t even be indoctrinated.
They never had any intention of educating these students. The curricula of whole language and “new math” show that education was never the goal. They always wanted only indoctrination- progressive madrasas.
Breaking out the data by race plays right into the liberal agenda. The root cause of the educational problem is not pigmentation. When this happens the search for a solution often considers race, which it shouldn’t.
Some of my friends posted the article about this. It was deemed as false by the Facebook gods. Seriously? The comments on the story could not be deemed as false. Too many were from parents of teachers stating this is happening. So much for technology right? What is going on? How can this even be thought about? One doesn’t need to do any work, or even show up and you receive a passing grade? Could the adults please come back. Being now in senior years, I can still recall school. I strongly remember the fear. The fear of not not… Read more »
The fact that so many people go to college, for degrees with no job prospects, show that SAT scores are not all they are cracked up to be. There are plenty of ways to have a successful career without a college degree.
Agree completely regarding pathways other than college. However to be an auto mechanic you need a second-year college reading level. To be a carpenter you need a decent handle on algebra. So academic competencies matter even for non-four-year college students. The SATs are merely a reflection of basic academic competencies. For all jobs you need soft skills including doing your assignments right the first time, showing up, making the effort. Yet some of the grading rubrics eyed here would undermine development of soft skills.
It has been 60 years since I took the college entrance test, but I do remember a student next to me putting his name on the test, then marking the A choice to every question, turning in the test hs said ” who needs this sh-t I don’t need any more schooling “. People play games with these tests.
There ya go. You’re giving an all-too-accurate, vivid real-world explanation as to how any testing works for people simply not interested in it or even interested in the daily preparatory background grind those days implicitly require. You can lead a horse to water, but ……
Should have always chosen ‘D’.
In a similar vein, Matt, there’s “gun violence,” which of course sounds serious on the surface, but completely ignores the reality that the vast majority of people causing “gun violence” are young black men, often from single parent homes and usually members of a gang. Maybe it’s impossible for Chicagoland school administrators to speak the truth, but can you imagine the waves they’d make if they did?
Poor black American culture is broken. Until politicians are brave enough to be honest, we’ll continue to get excuses while black students will continue to marginalize themselves from mainstream American culture and opportunities.
They are not doing anyone any favors by slapping better grades in the book. If your skill level remains low- that will follow you for life. Time to make the work harder, not easier.
While I agree with you superfically your statement here shows naivety as to how this will generally play out. If you think low-performance kids hate school now, just wait. Giving them grades based solely or even primarily based on objective performance standards isn’t likely going to improve their attitude. It will become worse and probably from a feeling of total despair in that the system is failing to recognize their learning-ability deficits to include their causal home and neighborhood influences. As a clue, how many of those kids of kids in any inner-city environment have parents who were college graduates?… Read more »
This is just making excuses for failure. Solution? Lower the bar to push kids through and so that teachers don’t look like the problem.
Just looked this up. There are many learning sites for kids for free or at a nominal cost. Khan Academy is free. Kids today know a lot about computers/cell phones/electronic devises and how to navigate them much more than most adults. They never knew a world without an internet so that tech shoud be emphasized in their learning. We hear that kids can barely read or write so how can they understand and comprehend what they see on their devices? Yet they do. Is it possible that the kids can understated the abbreviations/shortcuts/symbols of texting better than the normal written… Read more »
Freddy, I think it is a mistake to assume that the limited language of texting is equivalent to the full use of literate English. Limited language limits thinking and ideas. While I understand that language evolves and we no longer speak Elizabethan English, complex civilizations cannot be maintained by acronyms and emojis. Complex thought requires complex language.
Instant gratification through texting also reduces the attention span of all youngsters, which probably makes reading and understanding a book difficult. But that’s what teachers are for. Right?
Children learn to speak, and hopefully also read, before they are exposed to texting. Parents and teachers should instill a clear understanding that texting language is for recreational purposes and is in no way a substitute for literate English. Children should have a solid language foundation before they ever encounter texting.
“Should” is the operative word there. A good many don’t write that way simply because media has taught them its not necessary and certainly not “cool” among their peers. So, they tend to write as they speak” using short phrases and clearly non-standard ways of expression. So be it; language forever evolves for better or worse, my liege.
Language does evolve, no doubt. But why must we throw up our hands and decide it’s OK to go to a system that is little better than Egyptian hieroglyphics of 5000 years ago? Why is it that most “modern” ideas involve tossing aside what took civilization hundred or thousands of years to develop?
The “we” in your expression is from an adult’s point of view, but the ones who are primarily known for using that kind of language are people under the age of 30 and hopefully even less. As people age and have to pay their bills they tend to “grow up” and start to deal with an adult’s kind of life. Hollywood and might well the major exception since those sorts of people have younger people as their primary audience and source of income to a much higher extent. So, even the more intelligent there often “dumb down” their own language… Read more »
Dumbing down when speaking to the audience comfort level. Reminds me of Hillary – i’s no ways tired, normaly wooden Al Gore, prancing around the stage like a Baptist minister, and Joe Biden’s – “put yall back in chains”,
What you describe is what I had in mind when I said texting should be for recreational use, not as a language substitute. No objection to young people using it to communicate with their peers. And no doubt it is easier for quick messages! But the suggestion was that we should replace standard English literacy tests with a “literacy test” in texting acronyms. No one doubts that they can read text messages. But unless the goal is to make sure the instructions for the next wilding are understood, a test in text language serves no purpose. FWIW 😕😕
See Simplified Chinese, introduced by Maoist China to increase literacy rates. It’s like texting in Chinese before texting existed.
Of course, but there is a big gap between speaking and texting, and the thought process of reading a book and understanding an idea that can only be explained in multiple sentences or paragraphs or chapters. Modern technology does these kids no favors unless they utilize its many benefits. For someone like me who grew up loving the library and spending the day going back and forth from the card catalogs to the book stacks, having all this information at my fingertips is fantastic. For a kid who just uses technology to send short cryptic texts and post photos, but… Read more »
Bingo!
I agree but at the moment it seems this limited computer vocabulary is what the kids know best. Maybe just maybe things have gotten too complex. Knowledge is multiplying almost exponentially and the consequences of that knowledge may be our undoing as a civilization. The right sequence of 0’s and 1’s could destroy the planet. There is no animal or insect on the planet other than humans with a written language yet many prosper with sounds/chirps/noises maybe telepathy. How does a baby insect like an ant know what to do? They outnumber of many times over and survive but our… Read more »
Prozac, Oh how right you are! Imagine the world where no one can appreciate the great writers from Dante to Dostoyevsky to Dickens and Milton and Mark Twain and so much more. Poetry? Shakespeare, John Donne never able to be read and appreciated ?! Yes, indeed, it’s tough going but sooo worth it. And intelligent reading is essential to critical thinking. Seriously, it’s beyond awful to think of a world like that.
Civilization could not survive. The idea that text language could replace standard English would be the death knell of Western Civilization. We must not fail in our duty to pass this heritage on to our children.
As Orwell said in 1984 “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. “
Dead white men. No one cares to read them. Why aren’t we reading the texts of the african diaspora?
THEY DID THIS IN MAOIST CHINA. IT IS CALLED SIMPLIFIED CHINESE. https://blog.pangeanic.com/simplified-chinese-vs-traditional Simplified Chinese is a less complicated form of Traditional Chinese introduced by the People’s Republic of China on Mainland China between 1949 and 1964. The majority of common people in China could not read Traditional Chinese due to its complexity, and the government implemented the simplified system with the hope of improving literacy rates. The simplification process of Traditional Chinese was achieved by reducing strokes as well as merging characters. A stroke is a pen motion used to write a character. The more strokes a character has,… Read more »
And the new grading policies are going to improve SAT scores exactly how? If they are serious about improving scores, it sounds like they need to convince SAT to implement their equitable grading policies on SAT tests.
OPRFHS is a 3,400 person district which is 20% Black, 12% Hispanic, 9% multiracial and 3% Hispanic. The district itself spends almost $29,000 per student…which very high compared to the $13,000 national average. Only 3.6% of households are below poverty level. I mention this because only the Black students are doing poorly. Hispanic and multiracial students are far outperforming Blacks. These groups are below white and Asian students, but in striking distance. Blacks are another story entirely. What is really problematic here is that the Black community in this area is middle class, not poor. A very large amount of… Read more »
Neil, thanks for this. The “opportunity gap” used to be “the achievement gap” but that language became too raw and the new term shifts responsibility to institutions. It is shared, and resides also with parents; and then with teachers and the district. Back in the 70s Chicago Public Schools had CPC PreK-3 (Community-Parent Center). It was a comprehensive learning readiness program which included Latino kids and black kids and their parents and ran from pre-K through 3rd grade. There was a strong emphasis on the parental role in fostering reading and love of learning. There were a lot of supports… Read more »
About CPC PreK-3: nothing lasts forever.
Kids are being failed. Intentionally. If there is another explanation, I’d love to hear it. Manipulating how the output is calculated conveniently – and intentionally – ignores the input part of the process. I keep waiting for the howls of outrage from black people much like I’ve waited for similar protests from females who are idly watching womanhood itself be erased. George Carlin used to “joke” that the point of public schools was to produce people just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, but not smart enough to question things. I think he gave the system… Read more »
The failure of government run institutions is always always always an excuse by the political class to afford it more money and power.
No exceptions.
OPRF spends about $15K per student, that is almost double the state average for spending on student. There has to be an explanation why those black students are doing so poorly.
Interestingly, I read the original West Cook story and thought initially it was some satirist piece from The Onion. I penned a post on Facebook to initiate discussion, was about to send it when FB honchos deemed the link ‘false news’. I read the pushback-ian defensive articles, that it was merely a question to be considered at a Board meeting, not any sort of implementation. But remember–where there’s smoke…there’s fire. And as you say, Matt, they miss the point. The mere thought that the idea was proffered and the speaker wasn’t tarred, feathered and run out of town on a… Read more »
Hmm. One hundred five years ago, in 1917, Ernest Hemingway graduated from OPRFHS, his last brush with formal schooling. Went on to do pretty well in manipulating the written word. How the mighty have fallen. Pretty sad.
Hemmingway was a soviet spy, so of course he graduated from OPRFHS, that area has been producing communists for over a century now.
https://nypost.com/2017/03/16/how-the-soviets-once-recruited-ernest-hemingway-to-be-a-spy/
How the Soviets once recruited Ernest Hemingway to be a spy
The photo illustrating this story shows in French, smaller font, [lower line] what’s translated into English, larger font. Where’d you get this photo? Some Illinois school engaged in bilingual teaching? Perhaps schooling in Illinois isn’t as bad after all.
That’s the The French International School, a private K-12 on West Wilson, in Ravenswood. I happened to be walking by this past weekend, and that sign caught my eye. I hope they really adhere to Mead’s maxim. It’s more vital than ever. Beautiful, large facility. For those who can afford it.
“Suburban Chicago school district controversy: No plan to fix black academic failure” Well, gosh, why should there be? What’s the statistic we read earlier in this series? 90-some-odd % of Illinois’ K-12 public school teachers have been evaluated and found to be doing an excellent/exceptional/outstanding/heroic/good-n-woke job? Let’s see, how can I understand this if no-one’s lying? Well, it could be that teachers only expect 20% of black students to be able to read and write as well as the currently diluted passing standard is in Illinois public schools. If the teachers expect that 80% of young black students graduate unable… Read more »
when there is no plan to fix the failure, it’s not hard to conclude that failure is the goal.
If grading is to become segregated, how long will it be until the classrooms or schools become segregated? The obvious grading solution if these racialists are putting all their chips (for now) on “progress” but not outcomes, is to keep the grading system as is, but add a separate progress rating. I would suggest a simple up or down arrow, but I’m guessing that’s somehow racist. Bottom line, these people are evil for condemning another generation of students with the bigotry of low expectations. Parents also need to remove their children from these schools. A fantastic article accurately analyzing a… Read more »
Matt sure knows how to read the data and cut to the chase
Thanks very much. And that special Wirepoints report published last week and linked to near the end of this article has even more data and analysis on the statewide and institutional dimensions of lasting core-subject mastery.
The information you present is stunning when you consider that this is OPRF and not the Austin neighborhood right next door. I’ll assume that the OPRF parents and teachers want the best for these children, so I’d love to hear from them as to what they think the reasons are for these poor outcomes. The school board’s politically correct reasons are obviously not believable.
I don’t give a hoot about Chicago or Illinois education. I suppose that’s because I no longer live there.
News from Chicago and IL just keeps getting better and better doesn’t it?
The name you use then sure is right, Honest Jerk.
Thanks Joan. I agree. My comments are not always popular, hence the name.
It’s more trolling than commenting. Many people on here that left the state that post insightful comments, and some that don’t.
You may not give a hoot, but we’re talking about the next generation of voting citizens.
You should give a hoot about that.
I’ve given up on Illinois after spending almost all my life there. The people that stubbornly remain year after year deserve what they get.
I sent my children to private schools, but I still care about public education. First, because if we wish to be a free people we need an educated citizenry and because, like it or not, I’ve paid for it through my property taxes.
Silverfox, I agree. When I was looking for a house in North Carolina, I always checked the school rankings in the house listings. I wanted to see if there were responsible parents and some civic pride in the location. where I was going to move. You would be surprised at what you find. Some of the areas with expensive real estate did not have good schools, and some of the more economically diverse areas had great schools.
One more thing, my local community college is very impressive in terms of education and their facilities. They specifically target job training that aligns with local manufacturers and job opportunities.
Spending two years at a community college can be a very very smart thing to do. I worked at a private school for almost 30 years and it was becoming more common for the students there—all of whom were accepted to challenging four-year institutions—to opt for a community college to save money and to sort out their choice of opportunities and then to transfer into a four year college or university. The year I retired I was having a conversation with the class salutatorian and asked where he would be attending college and he said, I thought rather sheepishly, that he… Read more »
It’s a smart kid who starts at a community college or in the armed forces.
If I had a young daughter I would tell her to look for a plumber or electrician for a husband and forget the college graduates.
The Carolinas were on my short list when looking to leave Illinois.