How can this happen? 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?
Wirepoints looked across Illinois’ education system to find out. The Illinois State Board of Education shows districts automatically move kids on to the next grade, even when they’re not ready. We found grossly inflated teacher evaluations – in Decatur alone, 99.7% of teachers were rated “excellent or proficient.” In Rockford, it was nearly 95%. And we also found a number of feel-good “accountability” metrics. “On track to graduate” and “commendable schools” all help to deflect blame from the system's failures.
The data is damning and we’ve documented it all in our Special Report: Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictmen...
What’s worse, too many are enriching themselves off of a growing, $38 billion educational-industrial complex that’s protected by a weave of labor laws, a sprawling bureaucracy, generous salaries, constitutionally protected pensions, powerful superintendents and even more powerful unions.
No one wants to upset the apple cart, leaving parents and students trapped in a system where reform is virtually impossible.
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