Illinois schools: Poor results, high taxes and little accountability
Wirepoints has created a series of fact sheets that put individual school district statistics in the spotlight. We dug into Illinois State Board of Education and U.S. Census data to lay out student outcomes in the state’s 20 largest school districts and a select few others.
The data shows student outcomes are dismal, most children are passed along and yet teachers consistently receive high evaluations. Meanwhile, spending and tax burdens continue to grow while Illinois home values continue to suffer compared to the rest of the country.
Illinois ranks 8th in per student spending and has the highest property tax burden in the nation. Yet despite that spending, just 30% of Illinois students are reading at grade level and only 26% are proficient in math.
Results are even worse for Illinois’ minority students. Just 18% of Hispanic students and only 12% of black students statewide can read at grade level.
Click here to view Wirepoints’ School District Report Cards.
Examples of school district results include:
- In Springfield SD 186, student spending has increased by 50% and property taxes have risen 29%. Yet only 21% of students are reading at grade level and just 15% are proficient in math.
- In Wheaton Warrenville District 200, where property taxes have gone up 30% in the past decade, only 44% of students are reading and only 45% can do math at grade level.
- In Chicago 299, the district’s operating spending exceeded $20,000 per student, yet only 11% of black students and 17% of Hispanic students could read at grade level.
Families move into many Illinois communities for the schools. They pay high property taxes and, in many cases, suffer from declining home values. And yet the schools parents believe are excellent are actually failing many children.
Across Illinois, student performance has steadily declined, yet kids are pushed from grade to grade and eventually graduated regardless of their actual skills. Meanwhile, those involved in Illinois’ education systems have rewarded themselves and avoided any accountability for their ongoing failure to educate.
Wirepoints hopes that parents and taxpayers will use our report cards to begin to impose some real accountability on the system.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system
- Six facts Gov. Pritzker doesn’t want you to know about Illinois’ 2022 Report Card
- 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.
- Elgin’s Tony Sanders promoted to Illinois State Superintendent, though just 2 in 10 students in his district can read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
Ted joined Dan and Amy to talk about the free speech controversy brewing in Wilmette due to the city’s refusal to fly a religious freedom flag, the city’s left-wing excesses and the growing culture war, the latest money spent on the illegal immigrant crisis, and more.
Weekly crime statistics from the Chicago Police Department: Report through 4/14/2024.
Thanks for creating these useful school reports. They are simple, powerful, and concise and easy to share on social media.
One of the reasons that I like Wirepoints is that you guys are wonkish like me, but I like how these school reports are quick and easy for non-wonkish people to read.
From the d214.org May 12, 2022 Board Meeting agenda:
District #214 NSSEO 2022-2023 Budget
Tuition Programs: Projected Usage Cost per Student or Service District #214
Kirk School 57.00 students x $47,887.71 = $2,729,599
and there are other costs involved.
NSSEO = Northwest Suburban Special Education Organization
Not sure of your point? Is that too much? If so, where should they cut?
Too bad that Melissa’s reaction is all too typical of Illinois taxpayers.
Pensions, administration, campaign contributions, drag shows etc. . .
Library porn, field trips to campaign for Lori, and on and on
For Your Information.
The 57 students are special education students in the District 214 High School attendance boundary whose needs are deemed to be best met at Kirk School in the NSSEO public (government run) special education district. So District 214 sends the money and child to NSSEO. The high cost per student is due to their various special needs. The special needs are captured in each student’s IEP document to help ensure each student receives a free and appropriate education, as mandated by Federal law. The following from the NSSEO website: “Kirk School educational program focuses on high school students as they… Read more »
Nice report wirepoints, I copied Valley View 365u report and sent it to one of the school board members who is running for re-election, if I receive a response I will share it should be very interesting.
As I expected as of today March 24th I have not had a reply from the one candidate for school board that is running for re-election that I emailed I either aggravated him, or he is too afraid to reply and is hiding his head in the sand about the wirepoints article.
We want equity, we demand equity,let’s face it, we will never see equity
The new communications director is doing a great job! I love the flyer idea.
This is a generational problem. How can parents that were poorly educated in Illinois public schools assist their children (now in the same declining system)? If knowledge is passed on generation to generation, then so can lack of knowledge. That issue is made worse by there now being only one parent in a growing number of homes.
Educators are not blameless. They claim more money is the answer when they know full well that is not the core problem. The educators have no control over the core problem. Pointing the finger at them won’t fix anything.
Here is a resource for ISBE data: OEPP (operating expense per pupil) and PCTC (per capita tuition charge) along with 9-month average daily attendance.
These very important metrics are listed for each school district separately for district-to-district comparison purposes.
https://www.isbe.net/Pages/Operating-Expense-Per-Pupil.aspx
Don’t worry about how many can read at grade level. Worry how many know the correct pronouns to use.
This is not surprising. As districts pivot towards equity, they ALWAYS have lower academic performance. Always. Lowering performance for everyone is the goal of equity. For the high schools, the Illinois Report Card site gives six years of historical figures (no 2020) for the SAT. SAT scores have been dropping significantly since 2017 to today in CUSD 200. In CUSD 2000, 13% fewer kids meet or exceed performance level ELA compared to 6 years ago. The District is knee deep in the toxic sludge they call ‘equity’. The administrators will try to blame the pandemic…but the decrease started BEFORE the… Read more »
It might be helpful to note that in 2017 Illinois began requiring that ALL 11th graders take the SAT, regardless of whether or not they are heading to college. That means students who do not need the SAT are taking it, academically struggling students are taking it, English language learners are taking it, etc. Context matters.
Do you realize you just posted a huge L?
That’s kind of the point: everyone takes the same test, and it shows that scores have dropped in probably all schools around the state, and that fewer and fewer kids are meeting proficiency levels. That’s the context: lots and lots of kids can’t read or do math in our failing education system.
From your response it appears you don’t get the drift of what a great difference surely was made in the testing results starting in 2017 when ALL students in their junior class were required to take that SAT. Prior to that only those who wanted to take it did so, meaning a greater percentage were better students and those who were planning on going to college. Consequently, the SAT was no longer a set of higher testers but literally every body of a given age who attends the school system at that grade level. What result would seem logical to… Read more »
Jeez, another person who doesn’t understand. You’re the third person. I reread my post three times to make sure I wasn’t confusing things. I am not. I only discussed the previous six years of performance. That’s it. Because there is only six years of SAT data. Since 2017 when all students began taking the SAT. And in THOSE six years, pre-pandemic, scores have been falling. This has nothing to do with students pre-2017 who were a self-selecting group of college bound students. And it’s absurd to say “test scores are low because students don’t care”. This is a valid metric,… Read more »
Okay, you win apparently. I am absolutely astonished if the data for students taking the SAT was not published prior to 2017 as you claim. Should I presume that to be nation-wide? I took the SAT way back in the stone ages, but I can’t recall if I ever knew how my score compared to any state or national average. I thought it was important for college entrance purposes at some of the better places but have no memory as to minimal expectations for any such school.
I NEVER CLAIMED SAT data before 2017 was not published. I said. I said the IL Report Card website has six years of data, because as someone else pointed out, in 2017, the state required all students to take the SAT to graduate high school.
I believe his point is that you are comparing apples to oranges. B is stating that prior to 2017 not everyone was taking the SAT whereas now lower performing students are required to take the test. Do you seriously not understand the issue with comparing data sets that have different populations? You are comparing time frames when the pool of candidates taking the exam may have substantially changed. While I don’t know the data well enough to comment on B’s statement, if true that does make it difficult to compare time frames. This is basic reasoning type stuff.
No, B was trying to reconcile cognitive dissonance in his head and ended up not even understanding what he himself was trying to say. Of course the data only goes back to 2017. That’s why I said IL gives six years of historical figures and SAT scores have been dropping significantly since 2017 to today in CUSD 200. His ridiculous point was that the context for ridiculously low numbers of children being proficient at grade level is non-college bound students are taking the SAT since 2017. But according to B, it’s OK that a majority of kids in the state… Read more »
Wow – pretty salty. Perhaps I should elaborate beyond my original comment. Does it make sense to use the SAT as a single data point to define proficiency? Is it possible that a student could do well in Math or English, as defined by other metrics besides the SAT? Perhaps the student is a poor test taker and thus doesn’t perform well on standardized tests but gets straight A’s in their classes? Wirepoints is creating these graphics with cherry-picked data that are being used by school board candidates as a means to scare people into voting for them. I am… Read more »
Nice try. These are the state’s own results. And most children are doing poorly and the trend line over 6 years looks terrible, like a third world country. Like all communists, when the results evidence failure, the communist changes the metrics! We all know why this is happening: the pivot to equity and woke, which leaves little time to teach, combined with a ‘stay the course’ mentality of a failing common core, followed up by two years of insane covid restrictions. Yet, not one of these people will ever admit they were wrong. The entire educational complex believes that they… Read more »
“These are the state’s own results” – yes, from the SAT for high schools. What about GPAs? AP test scores? Etc.
By the way, I’m not a communist although it would sound pretty cool if I introduced myself that way at cocktail parties. I may try it.
Do you really expect the other results will be any different? Communists change the metrics when there are poor results. Poor test scores? Inflate grades! Pace of Grade Inflation Picked Up During the Pandemic, Study Says High school grade inflation ratcheted up in 2019 and the pace accelerated during the pandemic, according to ACT, the national college testing group. The findings echo a recent federal study that also showed signs of grade inflation, and highlight one more hurdle for high school students trying to regain their academic footing after credit and graduation disruptions caused by the pandemic. “Grade inflation is… Read more »
I understand now your frustration with my comments. I should not have started out with the SAT score concern and how that data is being used because that was too narrow a point. The reason I came to this site in the first place was because the Wirepoints graphics are being used by school board candidates as a means to scare/sway constituents into voting for them. No one in my community has asked candidates to remove data (except for a couple of instances where it truly was incorrect) from their campaign materials – they’ve only been asked for additional context… Read more »
It’s not complicated. There is no nuance. Scores are falling fast. The education system is a complete disaster run by ideologues who are, as a profession, unable to see or comprehend how utterly incompetent they are. The education profession has taken what used to be a trade – teaching/educating – and infused it with progressive nonsense, and broke it. If you want to break it down further, the education industry has adopted something called Critical Consciousness, developed by Brazilian pedagogue and educational theorist Paulo Freire, and is, for all practical purposes, a theory designed to educate children in marxism. It’s… Read more »
https://mobile.twitter.com/LoganLancing/status/1642725783671111681?cxt=HHwWgoC88bGZkcwtAAAA
Be ready. Know what Critical Consciousness is, where it comes from, and how it is developed. Know how it ties to and is developed by Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, SEL, Restorative Justice, and DEI.
The Chicago Media gives little to no publicity to Wirepoint’s findings, or more people would know about this. Not everyone reads the Wall Street Journal.
Our research gets far more national coverage than Illinois coverage, much of which effectively boycotts us, for no valid reason.
My guess is that there’s probably an unofficial/unwritten embargo of Wirepoints in the IL media, likely tied to JB’s/IL Dem’s campaign’s media spending and access to administration lackeys. JB’s campaign tosses around a lot of cash for himself and candidates he supports. That’s why the IL media is so uncritical of JB. My personal belief is that they are afraid to lose his financial support. It’s a tough time in media right now and every dollar counts. It also helps that ideologically, most media is behind JB’s progressive policies, but journalists toss truth to power aside when there’s not much… Read more »
This is why those of us that found Wirepoints are so lucky. Of course, if you simply absorb the data and don’t use it in a productive way, then the knowledge is wasted.
Part of the embargo can be attributed to a generation of journalism graduates who don’t like numbers and data and and view the world through a social justice narrative and its associated easy to memorize turgid prose. I talked to a young journalist in DC and asked him some pretty basic financial questions- said he had no idea of finances and it wasn’t his thing. A Georgetown grad working for a decent publication covering municipal matters. Of course this is anecdotal but asked him how he would tackle an article over the state and local pension debts in states like… Read more »
Please keep up the great work!!
In Illinois – and in the US – there is a “Regime Media” aka “MSM” which parrots the narratives of the liberal/left chattering classes and our “Dear Leaders”, and disdains and condemns any “dissenters” as heretical, or simply ignores them as “fringe”. I see this all the time in the Regime Media – the dismissal of the solid journalism done by Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, and here in Illinois, by Wirepoints. It’s a bit akin to the old USSR, where only “Regime Media” aka Pravda, Izvestia, Novosti, and the like were permitted, and any “unofficial” information sources were considered “samizdat” (“underground”… Read more »
What are you talking about? I’ve been studying communication, communist regimes and military strategy for years, and I wouldn’t consider the legacy media a “regime” by any means. They’re a poorly managed fifth column, and you’re giving them too much credit. What you’re failing to mention in your boasting of legacy media accomplishments is that the USSR failed! In other words, it’s not nearly as omnipotent as you or others relentlessly claim it is. As a matter of fact, communist regimes are very fragile and must firewall outside communication from getting in, otherwise they will fall. Tabbi, Weiss & Greenwald… Read more »
Go through all of the local news outlets in Chicago and count the parent/child news readers you could assemble such as Jeffery/Dina Baer or Phil Ponce and anyone of his sons. You realize news readers are the minor nobility in the U.S. they have an interest in maintaining the status quo and will defend it at all cost.
More like the Volkischer Beobachter.
I have to commend both the Madison-St. Clair Record and the Cook County Record for publishing Wirepoints material. I would consider both of these outlets to be part of the alternative conservative media, but much of their reporting is similar to what the mainstream media covered before it went woke. It’s disgusting that the mainstream media is so liberal and corrupt now that it refuses to publish anything from Wirepoints. The main competitors of the Madison-St. Clair Record are the Belleville News Democrat, the Alton Telegraph, the Edwardsville Intelligencer, and the Riverbender. The Riverbender is independently owned and is based… Read more »
Jim, you’re giving the Chicago media too much credit. The legacy media no longer communicates effectively or has credibility. These flyers were purposefully made to print and share so that you can make a difference! Set the agenda and talking points in your circle of influence moving forward. Put them in mailboxes. Post them on bulletin boards. You could even blow them up and stick them in your yard.
It would be encouraging to see the proudly Socialist/Marxist CTU’s Johnson-for-Mayor campaign result in Illinois voters experiencing a ‘wake up-n-smell the coffee’ moment regarding public school ‘education’ in Illinois. Problem is that when so many stakeholders are happy with schools that are nanny-state day care first, and reading-n-writing second, having 80% of students graduating while less than 1/3 of them are literate isn’t really a problem. Simple fact is that sending the vast majority of our K-12 ‘graduates’ out into the adult world unable to read and complete a good job’s employment application, having also ‘schooled’ many of them to… Read more »
I think that’s a tremendous benefit of this election — that it will put education front and center, sparking an honest look at where and why government schools are failing.
Sad that so little attention is paid to how ineffective public education is in this country – sad and scary. According to a US News article, “Overall, just 37% of 12th-graders reached or exceeded the academic preparedness benchmarks for both math and reading that would qualify them for entry-level college courses – a figure unchanged since 2015.” Of course, US News would put it that way, rather than writing that over 60% of graduating high school seniors failed to meet established academic goals. In any event, it seems that failing to adequately educate well over half of the country’s high… Read more »