The Wall Street Journal reports that statewide in Illinois, in 2019, only 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.

And that’s before COVID.

This is by design by the left. Children who can’t read, add, or learn to think are easily manipulated and can be made to believe anything. How better to groom a violent army of idiots.

The long term effect is incalculable. We are looking at vast schisms between the educated and the illiterate and not just in income and quality of life.

We aren’t often speechless, but the extent to which that performance is betraying a generation of schoolchildren is hard to put into words. Third grade children are eight years old, full of potential with minds like sponges to absorb what they are taught. Third grade is the year that children need to achieve a level of reading fluency that will prepare them to tackle more complex tasks in upper elementary grades that require comprehension.

A child who can’t read in third grade can’t do word problems in fourth or science experiments in fifth. Promoting Decatur children to the fourth grade when 99% are below grade level in math condemns them to future failure. By 11th grade, 5% of Decatur’s students are reading at grade level and 4% are on par in math. Why shouldn’t every single adult presiding over the Decatur schools be fired?

Fully a third of American students entering the fourth grade cannot read at third-grade level, a sobering statistic from the U.S. Department of Education.

The scores are even worse for students living in poverty, worse yet if no father is present in the household and worst of all for boys in fatherless homes. The task during those first three critical grades is to learn to read. Thereafter, students read to learn. But for those who can’t read at third-grade level, as much as half the curriculum they are taught from there on will be incomprehensible.

Oklahoma City area schools show many students below grade level in math, reading, science

By: Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoman

More Oklahoma City metro-area students fell below grade level in core subjects since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, state test scores show, but many districts say the latest results indicate growth from the year before.

Read more.

The Wall Street Journal: Illinois’s Shocking Report Card—The Land of Lincoln is failing its children and covering it up.

Parents may not grasp how bad things are when students are promoted from grade to grade even as their education is left behind. In Decatur, 97.3% of teachers were rated “excellent” or “proficient” in 2017, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. In 2018 that number was 99.7%. This year 100% of Chicago teachers were evaluated as excellent or proficient. The students are failing but the teachers are great? That contradiction shows the system is corrupt as well as incompetent.

Family and social dysfunction play some role in this scandal. But the overriding problem is school governance and the monopoly power of the teachers unions. The Chicago Teachers Union has walked out four times in the last seven years (2016, 2019, 2021, 2022), reaping higher salaries or benefits each time. Wirepoints says Illinois spends $16,660 per student annually, the eighth-highest state spending per student in the country.

Teachers get raises, schools get more money, and children are shuffled through until its time for the adults to collect a pension. Families that can get their children out are leaving in droves. Over the past two decades, 120,000 students have left the Chicago Public Schools. Wouldn’t you?

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller 

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