While teachers push Critical Race Theory and the sexualization of children in schools, academic rigor continues to slip lower and lower.
The Illinois State Board of Education’s recent report card is dreadful.
In 30 schools in Illinois, not a single student can read at grade level, 22 of which are in the City of Chicago.
Image: Wirepoints
In 53 schools, not a single student can do math at grade level, 33 of which are in Chicago.
Image: Wirepoints
Keep dancing Mayor Lightfoot.
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.”