What do Highland Park, Naperville, Barrington, Clarendon Hills, Oak Brook, Glenview, St. Charles, Hinsdale, Northfield, Wheaton, Burr Ridge, Evanston, Schaumburg, River Forest, Palatine, Northbrook, Western Springs, Buffalo Grove, Long Grove, Lincolnshire, Elmhurst, Glen Ellyn, Kenilworth, Arlington Heights, Hoffman Estates, Bannockburn, Deerfield, Wilmette, Libertyville, Vernon Hills, Elk Grove Village, Lake Bluff, La Grange, Lake Zurich, Glencoe, Rolling Meadows, Lake Forest, Winnetka, Mt. Prospect, Lindenhurst, Highland Park, Plainfield, Darien, Aurora and Bartlett have that Park Ridge doesn’t?
They each have at least one school on the Chicago Sun-Times’ lists of the “Top 100” Illinois elementary schools or middle schools. And many of those suburbs – using that term a little loosely, admittedly – have more than one school on one or both of those lists.
What’s going on with Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64? Where’s that top-shelf education the bureaucrats and teachers brag about to justify what the taxpayers have been paying for?
From past experience, we expect D-64 will trot out its customary alibi about how it doesn’t teach to the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests (ISATs), yet its students still have a 93.7 “meeting or exceeding” percentage on those tests. We will be reminded that D-64 students score at least 10 percentage points higher than the “state average,” as if such an average is a suitable benchmark for our semi-affluent community. This year, the District can even blame students with disabilities for bringing down the scores, as is reported in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Despite ISAT success, Dist. 64 fails to hit mark for first time,” Oct. 26).
According to that H-A article, the District’s assistant superintendent for student learning, Diane Betts, and Supt. Philip Bender “downplayed” missing the district’s No Child Left Behind Act goals this year, and they did identify the performance of students with disabilities as a culprit.
But that 93.7% meet-or-exceed standard the District touts may be deceptive, according to an article in today’s Chicago Tribune about test scores (“Schools fail to push students on state tests,” Oct. 29). That article cites a 2008 study by the Consortium of Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago as showing that students who simply “meet” rather than “exceed” 8th-grade math standards will “have little chance of scoring even a 20 on the ACT college entrance exam as [high school] juniors.” And 20 isn’t all that impressive, especially for semi-affluent communities.
Is this kind of academic performance good enough for the parents of District 64 elementary students? Is it good enough for the taxpayers who keep pouring approximately one-third of their property tax dollars into the District each year?
We don’t think so.
And, frankly, we’re tired of hearing D-64 bureaucrats and teachers union apologists trot out the same excuses to protect their jobs by convincing us that things are just swell. It’s time the parents, the students and the taxpayers started hearing about academic performance from the seven people who have been entrusted to oversee the bureaucrats – the D-64 School Board members: Pres. John Heyde, Genie Taddeo, Ted Smart, Eric Uhlig, Pat Fioretto, Sharon Lawson and Scott Zimmerman.
Four of their seats will be on the April 2011 ballot, so it sure would be interesting to hear what they – and anybody else who intends to run for one of those seats – have to say about that aspect of the Board’s stewardship of the District.
They might start by explaining what improvements in student performance (if any) have been identified since that multi-million dollar tax increase referendum passed in 2007.
EDITOR’S NOTE: To read and submit comments, click on the title of this post.
8 comments so far
I understand that test scores are a very important measurement tool but sometimes they make little sense.
For example, riddle me this. All these who have been attending lower and middle schools that have not been in the top 100 for quite some time end up at MS and take state tests that would indicate they are doing great. This year MS is number 19 ( down 6 from last year). So all these kids whose test scores contribute to MS doing so well were the same students who screwed up the tests a year or two earlier in middle school?? How is that?
The school board has, or takes, no control of the teaching task — it’s left to those reporting to the “assistant superintedant for student learning” – if that’s not a Kurt Vonnegut story in the making, I don’t know what is. What in hell are any employees, board members, yada, yada there for if not for the core competency of fostering student learning?
That’s just it. Student learning is not job one.
12:38, some traffic laws don’t make sense either, but they are the standard we are expected to live by. District 64 ignores ISAT performance at its students’ peril, and at the peril of Park Ridge homeowners whose values will start to suffer by the perception that our school system is second rate.
I cannot recall any of these seven school board members, or any of their predecessors, ever speaking out on year after year of average test scores.
Mr. Willoughby:
Two points.
First, I would remind you of the first part of my post agreeing about the importance of testing.
Second, you did nothing to answer my question. You actually did not even make an attempt!!
anon 2:55 pm
Your question didn’t get answered because John Willoughby can’t answer it and it is because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The Orangutang had even less worthwhile to say.
2:55, I didn’t intend to answer your question. But since you seem desperate for an answer, here are mine: maybe Maine South does a good job of making up for what the kids missed at D-64, or maybe the parochial school kids who attend Maine South helped raise MS’s scores.
Mr. Willoughby:
I guess I would question your use of the word desperate. How about we use the word curious instead?? I do think it is important to look with at least some skepticism at something so obviously “strange”. You just seem to write it off as not even worthy of looking into.
Your possible answers mean two things. If it is the parochial school kids raising the scores, they must be blowing away the test. They raised the rating from 100 and something (or more) to 19!!! Beyond that they did it being completely out numbered!! How many kids at MS come from public versus parochial?? I do not know for sure but it has to be 4 or 5 to 1.
If it is your second senario we should all stop the bitching about what Maine South teachers make because they doing a fantastic job bringing these “sub-100” students up to 19.
5:34, yes, especially those driver Ed teachers making north of 130k for 9 months of work and kick ass pension. That’s important stuff! For more entertainment go to http://www.Familytaxpayers.org and click on salary database.