Upcoming ‘New Illinois’ convention to split state driven by rural, urban divide – Center Square

Improving educational performance seems so easy to those who have no personal ongoing direct experience in doing it except within their own families. For the public at large, though, if the goals were fewer and simpler chances are they would be easier to attain. But, public education always tries politically to be all things to all people, an impossibility. We need to streamline the goals and narrow the number of students whom we define as reasonably educable to meet them. Otherwise we stay locked in a swamp of an impossible numbers of expectations blithely presuming all students will succeed regardless… Read more »

I gave my thoughts as a general idea as to how I’d like public schools to operate. But, inevitably they are run by the states and the local school boards, meaning politics on more of a local area rather than perfectly following a national model for schools. Predominating political opinions vary from one local area to another, thus the set of objectives varies as well. What ought to well in one area won’t in another most likely. Chicago politics is more liberal than most and to some degree stems from such a variety of ethnic areas as well as sociological… Read more »

My answer has to be the one you’d probably not like; I give your question a big “maybe” as my reply. Again, what a school strives to teach is bound up with local political pressures as to what’s emphasized, what’s absent or at least de-emphasized, who should be encouraged to study given subjects, how they should be taught, etc. A school doing well does so for a variety of reasons with general community support rather than active strong criticism playing a key role. Excess criticism from various divergent voices leads not to strong general student engagement but to chaotic stress… Read more »

I agree that we are doing it wrong—a truly huge arguably wasteful taxpayer expense pursuing too many disparate goals and with pitifully poor results for way too much of it.

1. Change curriculum that is clearly ineffective. Go back to basics- phonics and standard arithmetic instruction.
2. Eliminate the “social justice”elements of the current instruction. Our schools have been turned into progressive madrasas.
3. Drastically reduce administrative functions to concentrate on classroom learning.
4. Set up standards of behavior and enforce them. Stop leaning into excuses for bad behavior, then complaining that this produces results you don’t like.
5. Eliminate teacher unions. They tell us they are professionals. Stop demanding to be paid as if they are assembly line workers.

Off the top of my head.

The first 4 are the result of the administration and its decisions. Yet you continue to blame the teachers union for demanding to negotiate wages and benefits as is their constitutional right. Perhaps you should vote to elect a school board that supports those first four positions. If you want to eliminate teachers unions you will need to change the Illinois Constitution.

Now get to work on these issues and stop blaming teachers. Clearly that doesn’t work at all.

I forgot a big one: stop promoting and graduating kids who can’t read or do math.

The biggest issue is what Bill Gates said in 2017 to the Council of Great City Schools: “When disaggregated by race, we see two Americas. One where white students perform along the lines of the best in the world—with achievement comparable to countries like Finland and Korea. And another America, where Black and Latino students perform comparably to the students in the lowest performing OECD countries, such as Chile and Greece.” Few really want to discuss this but it’s absolutely true. PISA scores (a nearly worldwide test of 15 year olds, taken every couple of years) put white Americans near… Read more »

Keep playing the victim and pretend the voters are powerless. That’s how the current elected leaders like it.