Chambana Sun

As the school year progresses, Republican Rep. Brad Halbrook called for Decatur Public Schools to fire all its approximately 200 employees after blaming them for poor testing scores.

“Why shouldn’t every single adult presiding over the Decatur schools be fired,” he wrote on Facebook.

Education World reported various factors may influence a child’s performance in math, such as missing parent engagement.

Wirepoints wrote about the Wall Street Journal article, and quoted it: "WSJ: “No one thought Illinois schools were a shining beacon in the education landscape, but we didn’t know how truly awful so many of them are. A new report by Wirepoints using the state’s data shows that an epidemic of indifferent instruction and social promotion has left children unable to perform at even the most basic educational level.”

Student homelessness also influences one’s interest in learning. America’s Health Rankings United Health Foundation reported approximately 1.4 million students were homeless during the 2016-2017 school year.

The Wall Street Journal noted the following: "Statewide, in 2019, 36% of all third-grade students could read at grade level. That’s an F, and that’s the good news. 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. In Decatur, 2% of black third-graders are reading at grade level and only 1% are doing math at grade level.”

The National Center for Homeless Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro noted students of color faced high numbers of homelessness in the United States, mentioning approximately 47 thousand students were homeless in Illinois during the 2019-2020 school year.

Wirepoints shows that in 2019 7% of black third-graders in Rockford were reading at grade level, 11% of Hispanic third-graders in Elgin, and 8% of black third-graders in Peoria. Chicago’s 30% of black third-graders reading at grade level almost seems a triumph by comparison. Statewide, the system records a 30 percentage-point achievement gap between black students and white students. If you want to discuss “systemic racism,” start here, yet black Illinois politicians protect this indefensible system. The 2019 numbers are pre-Covid, so pocket any objections that the failure to educate students was a function of pandemic closures. Covid no doubt made things worse, but the rot is endemic.