Chicago City Wire

Most of America now seems to have recognized that something has gone badly wrong in our schools. In Illinois, however, a strange schizophrenia seems to prevail. 

On the one hand, the General assembly recently passed a bill creating a plan for public schools to change how reading is taught in hopes of improving dismal test scores. It had the support of most of Illinois’ education establishment and probably will be signed by Gov. JB Pritzker. That small step at least seemed to acknowledge a problem.

On the other hand, state officials are hostile to research like we’ve published at Wirepoints showing the full extent of school failure.  

For example, Pritzker angrily dismissed an October Wall Street Journal editorial that was based on our research. “That was provided to them by a right-wing carnival barker organization here in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said.

The Journal rightly headlined its editorial “Illinois’ Shocking Report Card: The Land of Lincoln is failing its children and covering it up.” It cited our research, which was based entirely on the state’s own reports, showing just 36% of all third grade students could read at grade level. That number drops to 27% for Hispanic students and 22% for black students statewide. In certain public school systems, the numbers plummet to single digits.  Math scores were even worse.

And when my colleague at Wirepoints, Ted Dabrowski, testified on the same research in a House hearing in Springfield earlier this year, lawmakers’ reaction ranged from indifference to rudeness.

Please, can’t we get over that defensiveness and at least recognize how badly major changes are needed? 

The problems aren’t just in Illinois. Recognition that Illinois is part of that national trend should help soften the defensiveness of our lawmakers. Nationally, standardized test scores for K-12 schools nationally began to plummet between 2012 and 2015, just when they did in Illinois. Chalkbeat, among other publications, has documented that decline. 

Debate the causes and solutions for that, which would be healthy. But start by recognizing that we are doomed as a society unless the deterioration in our schools is reversed.

At Wirepoints, we have our opinions about some of what should be done. We believe, for example, in some form of school choice – as do most Illinoisans. We think teachers’ unions have prioritized political and social indoctrination over basic learning. And we don’t think better educational outcomes result from blindly throwing money at schools, which has been Illinois’ habit. 

Those opinions may well be why Illinois’ progressive ruling class doesn’t like our primary research showing the full scope of the crisis.

But at least one leading progressive has it right. Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Secretary of Education, recently co-authored a column in the Chicago Sun-Times that reads much like a Wirepoints research report. “The plain truth,” he wrote, “is that our education system is simultaneously waving a red flag about learning loss while telling us everything is OK — a mixed message if ever there was one.” 

Most importantly, Duncan wrote that parents will demand better “when given additional information about their children’s performance.” Yes, indeed. That’s why we’ve published, on Wirepoints’ website, report cards on [most of Illinois schools].

Remedies have to match the maladies, doctors say. It’s the same for any problem. Nothing gets properly fixed without a full, honest diagnosis. That should be the common ground on which we start: Our schools are in crisis. 

Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints, an independent research and commentary nonprofit organization.