Poor achievement, zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system

When Wirepoints first noticed the pre-pandemic scores of Decatur 3rd-graders, we thought they’d been misreported. The State Report Card said just 2% of Decatur’s black 3rd-graders met or exceeded reading requirements. Really, just 2%?

What’s worse, we found a similar story could be told in Rockford, Waukegan, Peoria, Quincy, Chicago or any one of a hundred Illinois cities. Just 7% of Rockford’s black, 11% of Elgin’s Hispanic and 10% of Waukegan’s black 3rd-graders met reading proficiency requirements in 2019.

We didn’t believe the results could be so dire, but the bad numbers are there, district after district, year after year.

Who is it that’s allowing such bad outcomes to persist without intervention? Administrators? School boards? The Illinois State Board of Education? State lawmakers? And where are the parents in all this? Does anybody care?

Wirepoints looked across Illinois’ education system to find out. The result was our latest report: Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system.

https://wirepoints.org/poor-student-achievement-and-near-zero-accountability-an-indictment-of-illinois-public-education-system-wirepoints-special-report/