Thomas B. Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children?

November 1, 2006

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children? appraises each state according to thirty indicators across three major categories: student achievement for low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students; achievement trends for these same groups over the last 10-15 years; and the state's track record in implementing bold education reforms. It finds that just eight states can claim even moderate success over the past 15 years at boosting the percentage of their poor or minority students who are at or above proficient in reading, math or science. In addition, most states making significant achievement gains--including California, Delaware, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas--are national leaders in education reform, indicating that solid standards, tough accountability, and greater school choice can yield better classroom results.

View the press release for this report

Contents

Illinois

 

 


 

Reform Is Blowing in the Wind

It isn't just because of Lake Michigan's cold gusts that Chicago is called the Windy City. It's also the hot air spewed by the City of the Big Shoulders's politicians as well as their Springfield counterparts. Consider Mayor Richard Daley, who in July made a highly visible visit to an elementary school on the city's rough and tumble (and mostly African-American and low-income) South Side to croon about double-digit increases in reading and math scores on state tests from the year before. "We're on our way to becoming the best urban school district in the nation," said Daley.

Not long after, education leaders downstate in Springfield did some puffing of their own, touting statewide test results for Illinois students who were, they announced, showing "good ongoing progress" in reading, science, and math in grades 3-8. 

The blustery grandstanding was predictable. It comes with ownership. Daley took over Chicago's public school system, the nation's third largest, more than a decade ago. Two years ago, Governor Rod Blagojevich gained control over the state's school board, which is constitutionally independent of the state's chief executive. Eager for good news in the K-12 arena, both leaders leapt at the opportunity to show the state's citizens that they're on the job and delivering results.

The problem is that this sort of good news evaporates in the face of a reliable national benchmark. While the state test shows improvement, the National Assessment for Educational Progress shows that Illinois's low-income and minority students score worse than their counterparts in all but 12 states and have made no significant progress over the last decade. This record is among the worst in the nation.

How, then, to explain the rise in state test scores? It could be that the adults are getting smarter about manipulating test results. The most blatant example of this was the state's Testing Committee's decision to lower the cut score for passing the math section.

"The biggest change that this state seems to be making is adjusting how they do tests," says Mike Van Winkle, the spokesperson for the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank.  "This appears to be the state's approach to reform."

Indeed, there's much confusion over state tests in Illinois. The state changed assessments in 2000 and then changed test vendors in 2005, leading to late delivery of testing packets to schools statewide and making comparison of scores across time nearly impossible. Such inconsistency means that Illinois achievement scores are a "moving target," according to Jim Broadway of the State School News Service.

Whatever the measures and targets, the Prairie State is not doing enough to improve student learning. While Chicago's leaders have demonstrated steadfastness in their decade-long effort to reform the city's schools, the rest of the state is treading water. Illinois has middling academic standards, no statewide high school exit exam, and an archaic reliance on education schools as the only producers of teachers for public classrooms.

Charter schools scarcely fare better. While Chicago is home to some high-performing charter schools, the state's cramped charter law ensures these schools will pose little threat to the educational establishment. The number of charters is currently capped at 60 schools statewide (30 in Chicago, 15 in suburban communities, and 15 down-state). These 60 schools face enormous problems. They receive no direct funding from the state for facilities, and authorization can only be obtained by going through local school boards, which, outside of Chicago, are mostly not interested.

"They're doing absolutely nothing on choice," says Van Winkle. The state does offer a $500 tax credit for sending children to private schools, but this is helpful mostly to middle-class parents with children already in private schools. Meanwhile, scores of Chicago Catholic schools have closed in recent years. And with no statewide voucher program, the future doesn't look promising.

"It's like trying to set up a FedEx in the corner of the local post office," says Elizabeth Evans, executive director of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, about the charter law's limitations.

Perhaps other issues, such as school finance, are sucking up all the school reform oxygen. With his state long recognized as among the most inequitable school-funding jurisdictions in the land, Blagojevich has put forth a plan to fix the system. But his "fix" mostly just reshuffles who's paying the bill. Rather than the state simply handing out money, it will determine how much it should cost to educate students in a particular community, determine what percentage of that cost local communities can afford to cover through property taxes, and then write a check for the difference. But this is not "Weighted Student Funding," a promising reform strategy whereby education dollars follow students to the school of their choice, with more money going to needier children. The new plan is "weighted," but not portable, so many of the same old inequities and inefficiencies will continue.

Illinois's education problems are real, but the state's patchy, belated approach to fixing them ensures only that the state will continue to lag behind the rest of the nation. Politicians may spew all the hot air they want, but it'll take a lot more than a warm wind to disperse the ominous student achievement cloud hanging over the Land of Lincoln.

 

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