District 90 learning rates below the national average six of the last eight years

Learning rates in River Forest district 90 were lower than the national average during six of the last eight years, making this wealthy small suburban Chicago village a national outlier.

Learning rate is a measure of school quality.  The metric uses changes in average test score from year to year, relative to the national average.  Recent updates to The Educational Opportunity Project EXPLORER at Stanford University (EOP), which uses grades 3 through 8 and data from 2009 to 2019, shows a learning rate of -2.4% (±7.2%) below the national average for River Forest district 90.  This value ranks last among districts it calls comparable.  Northbrook/Glenview district 30 and Western Springs district 101 topped these local comparators with the highest average test scores and the highest learning rates. 

Table 1. Measures of school quality and standard errors (+/-) calculated from district data by EOP using the years 2009-2019 and V5 of EXPLORER.

Dr. Sean Reardon, director of Stanford’s EOP, contrasts test scores and learning rates with a health analogy, saying “We shouldn’t assess a hospital based on the health of its patients; rather, we should ask how much the patients’ health improves as a result of time in that hospital.”

Higher test scores are an indicator of more intelligent students; however, students arrive at school with different knowledge and experience, most closely tied to family income.  If the purpose of school is education through rigorous curricula and instruction, then school quality should be evaluated on how much students learn while in school.

The status of national academic averages is important to interpreting these local results.  A recent National Assessment of Educational Progress report shows a record-low number of 4th (40%) and 8th (33%) graders have below-basic reading skills, or below NEAP’s lowest performance level. In math, just 39% of 4th graders and 28% of eight graders ranked at or above NEAP’s Proficient level of performance.  According to NEAP, the levels “describe what students should know and be able to do”.

River Forest is an outlier when compared among all other districts in the United States.  Figure 1. is taken from the EOP EXPLORER. It is a plot of socioeconomic status (horizontal) against average learning rate (vertical) for all school districts in the United States.  The small suburban Chicago village of River Forest, IL, is still among the wealthiest, and students are still producing good test scores.  The problem is with its learning rate, far below comparable schools and even below the national average.

“It’s not the way reasonable people want to stand out” commented one River Forest resident.

Figure 1. EOP Explorer scatter plot of average family socioeconomic status versus average learning rate for all districts in the United States, River Forest, IL district 90 is orange.

Another powerful addition to the updated EOP is the EDUCATION RECOVERY EXPLORER.  It uses district data from 2009 to 2024, excludes 2020 and 2021 as a “pandemic data gap”, and breaks out math and reading separately. Figure 2. is taken from the full report. The vertical axis shows how students scored relative to the national average. For example, the average reading score rose to ~4.4 grades above the national average until 2016, then suddenly fell by more than one full grade by 2019.   

Six of the eight years after 2016 produced learning rates in reading below the national average.  Math scores are lower and less variable.  There is a slight downward trend that returns to ~3.1 grades above the national average by 2024.  The year 2024 is the first since 2016 with signs of improving school quality.

Figure 2. River Forest district 90 school quality in grades 3-8 between 2009 and 2024 with marks describing policy-induced learning loss (lower ceiling). Full report HERE.

“We’ve always been a high performing district” said Ralph Martire, district 90 board president, in a January 2019 interview with Wednesday Journal.

Martire and superintendent Ed Condon were named River Forest co-villager of the year by the Oak Park, IL media outlet.  Martire described serving on an Excellence and Equity in Education Commission during the Obama administration, and in 2016 hired a district 90 curriculum director to implement what she called “social justice equity”.  Hawley came from Winnetka district 36 after being forced to resign.  Her superintendent acknowledged she “concealed student performance data” amid parent concerns over declining school quality. 

Under the new pedagogy, teachers would stop differentiating instruction for ability level (de-tracking). They were given unproven and poor performing K-8 curricula conforming to a constructivist (student led) theory of learning, including Lucy Calkins Units of Study for reading and writing. The all-new curricula would replace proven practices using explicit teacher-led instruction that had attracted families and produced National Blue Ribbons. School officials were focused on a ”systems problem” instead of education, and saw “lowering the ceiling” on students as a solution.   At a time when the country was passing legislation banning a flawed theory of learning, River Forest was adopting it and disregarding parent concerns.  Martire would later join the OPRF district 200 high school board and lead a de-tracking effort that began in 2022.  He was superseded by district 90 board presidents Barbara Hickey, Richard Moore, and Stacey Williams.

While many districts are asking themselves how much learning they missed with remote teaching, River Foresters are wondering how many years it will take for schools to return to pre-“social justice equity” levels of school quality.

River Forest, IL District 90 has two K-4 elementary schools and one 5-8th middle school.  In 2024 it reported $42.7M in capital assets, a nine-month average daily attendance of 1263 students, 3% low-income students, 216 full time employees, total disbursement/expenditures of $32.3M, and per pupil spending in excess of $21, 000.

Visit the Educational Opportunity Project website at https://edopportunity.org

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