A new damn report has found that Illinois has 60 public schools at which zero students reported grade-level proficiency in either reading or math, in a troubling sign for the state’s education system.
Wirepoints released the findings that stem from 2022 data from the Illinois Department of Education, which indicated that in 55 Chicago public schools, no students were reported proficient in either math or reading.
According to the report, there were 22 schools that had no students who could read at grade level; another 33 schools claimed that no students could perform math at grade level.
Statewide, there were 53 schools that reported no students who were proficient in math; another 30 schools reported zero students who were able to read at grade level.
Meanwhile, lawmaker slams pandemic policies for ‘serious’ academic decline.
Illinois state Sen. Willie Preston, a Democrat and a father of six, joined ‘Fox & Friends First’ to discuss the report and how parents and lawmakers in the city can help children excel in the classroom post-pandemic, Fox News reported.
‘Government isn’t the anthem for all things,’ Preston told Griff Jenkins. ‘I think that we have to reengage parents, have parents actively take a role inside the schools when they can be, but in addition, we need to make certain that we … spend our money in the right way as it pertains to our children’s education.’
Preston blamed the academic decline on the pandemic, given the virtual and remote learning in which students were forced to partake amid stringent lockdowns and school closures.
‘I believe this is something that is a byproduct of some of our policies that we were taking during COVID,’ Preston said.
‘This is a very serious issue and one that as a father and as a lawmaker, I’m going to be addressing feverishly.
‘But even the authors of the Wirepoints report, Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner, pushed back against that narrative, noting that 2019 levels were not significantly better than the data from 2022.
‘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,’ they wrote.
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.’
