Rarely do you hear about infidelity in public schools and feel good about the perpetrators. The difference in how teachers at both District 90 elementary schools are responding to the sizzle of DEI, SEL, and critical consciousness may change your mind.
One of Cook County’s smallest municipalities, the village’s roughly 700 K-5 students are assigned to an elementary school based on living north or south of Chicago Avenue. North of Chicago Ave, Willard Elementary third graders continue to lose ground in English language arts with over 44% of third graders not proficient in reading. Just a few blocks south of Chicago Ave. at Lincoln Elementary, that number is just 13.9%, and shrinking.
You might ask yourself, could there be a real discrepancy in IQ among neighbors, or have some Willard teachers doubled down on bad education, while some Lincoln teachers practice infidelity to bad curricula and instruction.
Both schools were part of an unscrupulous plan to “lower the ceiling” on students and families through comprehensive “systems change” to K-8 curricula and instruction. Higher than average intelligence in graduating eighth grade classes was a sure sign of racism according to then board president Ralph Martire, who told a paid audience of National Equity Project consultants “our teachers and our curriculum discriminate”.
River Forest would need to lower the ceiling so 8th grade graduates would flow into a reimagined freshman year at OPRF high school that was missing separate, standalone freshman honors courses in English, history, and science. Martire et al. would later lead the charge to de-track OPRH District 200 high school, something students recently described as “teaching to the middle”.
In 2016 the District 90 board hired a curriculum director excited about this type of social justice. She promptly hired staff to enforce “fidelity” to a pedagogy of the oppressed. This included a style of reading instruction that was debunked in the 1990’s.
The community was mostly oblivious, and a handful of wealthy white moms north of Chicago Ave called any mention of the changes a conspiracy or fearmongering. Shutting down actual debate was somehow enlightened. They took to social media saying banning books, abandoning differentiated instruction, preaching toxic masculinity, and teaching gender as a social construct wasn’t happening. But if it was happening, then those asking questions or dissenting should just move. A strange type of welcoming and inclusivity.
At the time, one District 90 board member said the community should “trust us” while describing how her wealth and privilege would insulate her children from any harm caused by the social experiment. Meanwhile learning rates in ELA fell off a cliff, and a poorly rated math curriculum wasn’t helping students either.
The district’s communication team did well pretending nothing was happening to students or teachers under an odd lower-ceiling approach, but they couldn’t hide differences in culture developing between schools and evident in the state’s culture survey.
Although teachers at both Lincoln and Willard downgraded their administration following Martire's policy-induced learning loss, teachers at Lincoln Elementary remained much more frustrated than teachers at Willard.
Bad board decisions had shocked teachers, confused a community, and stunted student learning. Then it seems, slowly and quietly, some Lincoln teachers set their own high expectations for students, and reverted to literacy instruction they knew would raise the floor.
In a signal of just how real this woke achievement gap is along Chicago Ave, anonymous sources tell E3 some Willard teachers may have called this infidelity to debunked curriculum a traitorous and anti-equity act by Lincoln teachers. If they are right, then it is this kind of infidelity that students, families, and some teachers are happy about of these days south of Chicago Avenue.
Side note - It is true, E3 prefers to pick on third grade reading because any honest teacher will tell you 1) students should know how to read by third grade, and 2) most learning after third grade happens by reading.
Now onto the Exemplary D90 door-drop.
District 90 administrators, parents, and even village officials are aflutter with the news the Illinois State Board of Education ranked all three District 90 schools in the top 10% of all Illinois public schools - Exemplary. This is the central message in the very colorful one-page Fall door drop with a heading “All district 90 schools awarded exemplary designations”. The superintendent remains proud.
It is important to point out only 21% of the summative designation has to do with academic proficiency in Math, English and Science. An almost equal weighting goes to absenteeism. Further, the average Illinois proficiency in English language arts and math are 39% and 28%, respectively. These District 90 schools are Exemplary; however, performance data on Gifted Students are redacted.
District communications is a real-head scratcher. Lincoln Elementary third graders are proficient in reading at over three times the rate compared to Willard, and yet the backside of this door drop is covered in pictures. Yes, trust has tanked too. The online version is here.
E3 did a deep dive into ISBE’s summative designations and whether they tell us anything meaningful about school performance, or just provide another measure of Illinois’ fastest snails. You can find that here.
With an election next Spring, many are hoping to replace incumbent board members with residents that share this fairness value and will commit to putting curriculum and instruction back on the mantle of public education. This new gap should be the easiest to eliminate.
SUBSCRIBE to E3 - where Equity really does mean fairness.