A new report has found that there are 60 public schools in Illinois where no students can read or do math at grade level. This is a bad sign for the state’s education system.
According to an analysis of state data by Wirepoints, there are 23 schools in the Prairie State, 18 of which are in Chicago, where no student showed proficiency in either subject in 2022.
The study found that another seven Illinois schools had no students who were proficient in reading alone, and 30 schools had no students who were proficient in math alone.
Willie Preston, a Democrat whose district includes part of Chicago’s South Side, spoke out to say that he was saddened by the results and to ask parents and policymakers to work together to find answers.
Preston told Fox News on Monday, “I think this is a result of some of the policies we were following during COVID.” “This is a very important problem that I will work hard to solve as a father and as a lawmaker,” he said.
The Illinois State Board of Education has found that only 29.9% of students in the state’s public schools tested as proficient in reading and 25.8% in math. This is down from 37% and 32%, respectively, in 2019.
Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints used these numbers to show that the problems with the state’s education system go beyond the problems caused by the pandemic.
“People who support the current system will always say that Covid is the main reason why the scores are so low. But a look at the 2019 numbers shows that the reading and math scores weren’t much better than they are now,’ they wrote.
The two also pointed out that spending per student at some of the schools with the worst results has gone up a lot since 2019.
Preston also said that bad results for students were caused by a lot of different things.
“I don’t think it’s fair to blame teachers for everything. Preston said, “I think there are other things going on.” “There are a lot of children who are homeless and don’t go to school regularly… A lot of these kids come from places where people are poor.’
“As a community, we just can’t pay attention to how much money goes into the classroom,” he said. “We need to get the working class involved again and rebuild working-class communities.”
In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said, “When academic scores for 2022 were released last fall, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) saw that, for the most part, our scores were similar to those of other large urban districts.”
The district said, “We have reminded our community that these scores are a direct reflection of the pandemic challenges, not of the amazing talent and potential of our students and staff.”
“We expect a strong recovery this year and next, and we hope that these gains will show up in our internal assessments, grades, and classroom engagement, as well as in State assessments,” the statement said.
After the pandemic, Chicago is not the only public school system where students’ grades aren’t as good as they should be.
A recent study found that 23 schools in Baltimore are failing their students because not a single student at those schools reached the required level in math.
Fox News 45’s Project Baltimore, which looks into things, found the schools. Their team looked at the test results for 2022 from the Maryland State Department of Education.
They found that no student in 10 high schools, 8 elementary schools, 3 Middle/High schools, and 2 Elementary/Middle schools met the required math standard.
A study done in October found that the closing of COVID schools put the average American child six months behind in math. Students in the poorest parts of the country were two and a half years behind.
The Education Recovery Scorecard, which looked at test scores district by district, found that the average student lost more than half a school year’s worth of learning in math and almost a quarter of a school year’s worth of learning in reading.
The report said that the pandemic was bad for children’s health because it closed their schools, put their parents out of work, made their families and teachers sick, and made their daily lives full of chaos and fear.
Sean Reardon, a professor of education at Stanford, and Thomas Kane, an economist at Harvard, put together and analyzed the data. Reardon said, “When there’s a big crisis, the worst effects are felt by the people with the least resources.”
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