When Decatur Makes National News It’s Never Good

“Why shouldn’t every single adult presiding over the Decatur schools be fired?”-Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, October 5

Mike Mathieson
October 12, 2022

I. What?

On June 1, 2022 Wirepoints Corporation ran an in depth article - An indictment of Illinois’ education system – that hammered our state’s public education system.  They used Illinois schools own reporting system to show the dreadfully low percentage of students that are meeting state requirements in Math and English Language Arts (ELA).  The Wirepoints people singled out several school districts as incredible underperformers but saved quite a bit of their vitriol for Decatur Public Schools where in 2019 (pre-covid to avoid excuses) just 2 percent of black and 16 percent of white students could read at grade level.  This is obviously incredibly bad, but particularly noteworthy when you compare Decatur to Chicago where 30 percent of black third graders are reading at grade level.

Then on Wednesday, October 5 the Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece using the Wirepoints data to again criticize the horribly performing Illinois school system, and additionally call out Decatur for being one of the worst of the worst.  In the article (paywalled, but here’s the link) the WSJ editorial board said, and I’m not making this up,

“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?” And “if you want to discuss systemic racism, start here, yet black Illinois politicians protect this indefensible system”.

One interesting thing about these articles is that no one – not the Herald and Review in their response piece, or anyone from DPS 61, or even anyone from the Illinois State Board of Education, is refuting the underlying data.  It’s all true – we’re doing an awful job of educating your kids, and we know it’s all true, and well…  (Crickets).  There was, of course, a response from each group, and I have a response, but let’s take a better look at the problem first.

II. Problems?

Are there problems with what the WSJ and Wirepoints are proposing? Well, yes and no, but mostly no - because it’s all true.  But there is one important problem as it relates to Decatur.  The solutions offered by Wirepoints in their analysis are both long-term and will require a political sea change in the state of Illinois.  They correctly point at the horrific symbiotic relationship we have in our state between the Teachers Unions and the school district administrations, where teachers aren’t held accountable and continue to get cushy contracts in closed-to-the-public negotiations provided that school administrators continue to get even cushier contracts.  Illinois teachers make more money than any of the 12 other states in the Midwest; our per student spending is higher than any other state in the Midwest (and 8th highest in the nation); and the amount we pay administrators, both during their careers but especially in retirement, is grotesquely high.  And Wirepoints says – “hey, we need to change that!”  OK, I hate to sound like a defeatist, but good luck with that.

Additionally, Wirepoints spends a considerable amount of ink on the propensity in Illinois to use social promotions (promoting a student to the next grade each year no matter how well they’ve mastered the grade level material).  Decatur public schools is a poster child for this philosophy, and I’ve heard many people complain that it doesn’t make sense, but… really?  When 1% of our children in third grade are performing at grade level in math, what are we to do?  Retain 99% of them?  Or just retain the students that aren’t just bad, but incredibly, incredibly bad?  Or, from the other perspective, let’s say we do retain 3 or 5% of our students in every grade, each year.  Is this really going to help our test scores?  If it incentivizes the kids to perform better, I'm on board but I’m still waiting on any research that shows that correlation.  And do parents want a seventh or eighth grade boy in their child’s sixth grade class.  I’m not sure about this one – be careful what you wish for.

The last major issue Wirepoints mentions, and the WSJ highlights is the rating system we use for teachers where, “in Decatur, 97.3% of teachers were rated ‘excellent’ or ‘proficient’ in 2017”.  It’s macabre humor that we have nearly the same percentage of teachers in Decatur that are worth retaining as the percentage of black kids in third grade that should also be retained.  But what are we to do?  While we absolutely need to do a better job of evaluating teachers and working with teachers that don’t measure up, what are we going to do when we find out that 40% of our teachers are mediocre and 10% are terrible? Can we fire them?  As sad as it sounds, we need warm bodies because we have multiple students every day being moved to other classrooms because we don’t have enough teachers.  This is a complicated issue, an issue that fits in the classification of a broader community concern, that should be discussed by our School Board and our Superintendent, but don’t expect an easy solution.

Reduce the number of districts, fix administrator bloat, cut our states ridiculous pension system, end social promotions - all huge issues in Illinois and obviously very real problems.  But they aren’t going to be addressed, nor do they even need to be discussed in school board meetings in Decatur.  THE ISSUE IS TEST SCORES and none of the solutions offered by either the WSJ or Wirepoints will help DPS catch up to Chicago in that respect.  (I can’t believe I’m holding Chicago up as a standard we want to achieve!)  Even though we vastly underperform, if we need to offer more money to attract teachers, forget all the stats about our state compared to others – we need to do it!  We don’t have enough teachers, RTI tutors, substitutes, etc. and the best way to help low SES students achieve is with individual and small group help.  The economic reality of supply and demand says that if we need to pay more – sorry Wirepoints – we should, but only for the right things!

III. The Response.

Here’s where things get interesting.  District 61, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), and even Valarie Wells at the Herald and Review in her article, have responded to the uproar the WSJ article created; but unfortunately, all the responses leave quite a bit to be desired. 

Starting with the least interesting and working forward:  Along with quotes from DPS and the ISBE, Ms. Wells has in her article a few paragraphs about our movement from NCLB to ESSB (read the article if you need more context) and how that change would send more money (which Wirepoints claims is really one of the culprits in this whole mess) to underperforming schools.  Look, we have 70 million dollars in CARES money now. If we can't figure out how to use that money to get more teachers right now - that's on us.

The ISBE response from spokeswoman Jackie Matthews, in the H&R article is even more tepid. 

Evidence-based funding has been implemented, though not all districts have yet reached the ‘fully funded’ status, which is meant to provide resources to districts with lower equalized assessed valuation so that schools in those areas are not struggling. For decades, Illinois ranked worst in the nation for funding education, and Gov. (J.B.) Pritzker is reversing that travesty.

Once again, the solution to too much money in the Illinois funding paradigm is – more money?  I keep waiting for someone to explain why the Wirepoints data is bad or misleading, but nothing from anyone.  And did I mention – the issue Wirepoints is discussing is TEST SCORES.

And finally, our district’s response, and I’ll break these down succinctly, one at a time.  Denise Swarthout is quoted in the H&R article and lays out the following three measures, which have already been implemented and should start showing results.

1. A standardized curriculum,

2. data, and

3. accountability measures.

Regarding a standardized curriculum – we wrote about that here, and our view is that a standardized curriculum and “teaching to the test” is part of the problem and not part of the solution.  Let me repeat that – in our opinion, the top solution on the districts list is only making the problem worse.  Summarizing our thoughts, this approach ignores the top and the bottom quartile of students and focuses only on the middle.  And even if the approach might benefit the middle quartiles somewhat, it probably nets negative when you factor in the removal of a teacher’s autonomy to teach what they feel is the appropriate level on any given day.  Additionally, there’s exciting new research out of the University of Rochester that also refutes this strategy (which I’ll cover in more detail in the next section).

Regarding data:  I’m not sure how data is going to help with this problem, particularly when you’re treating everyone in each grade exactly the same.  Moreover, and pardon my skepticism, but anyone that has followed district discussions during the past several years has seen the district use data mostly to attempt to fool the parents and public.  Some of the stats regarding summer school, Fastbridge scores, etc. have been an effort to put lipstick on the proverbial pig.  I try not to get nasty in my criticisms, but I have little to no confidence in data-based changes coming out of the leadership team in its current structure.

Finally, what are we doing with “accountability measures”?  How are we “measuring” underperformance?  Are we taking economic data, school data, previous results, and current results to run an analysis of variance to tease out which schools or teachers are underperforming?  Come on!  Accountability in this context simply means micromanaging the schools and teachers to determine which aren’t teaching the exact subject matter the district feels should be taught on a specific day at a specific time!  This is not going to get us to the promised land.

To sum up, the only real measure that has been taken to improve test scores in the district is a change three years ago to use a standardized curriculum.  That’s a lot to hang your hat on, and one that falls squarely in the type of issue the current board should discuss.

IV. Where we stand.

Dr. Clark has had a one-year honeymoon, and this is her first defining moment – national news, test scores, et. al.  Up till now she has been appropriately managing by committee, coming along slow, gaining consensus, and moving in (hopefully) the right direction.  But now she’s on her own and it’s time for her to sit down with the Board and create a list of broader themes we need to implement to move the district forward.  I’ve said before that Duane and I aren’t going to criticize others without putting ourselves out there for scrutiny, so here’s what we would do to close the testing gap between DPS and Chicago (and if you’ve been reading our articles, much of this will sound familiar).

1. Use CARES money for bonuses to attract more teachers.  Among the new teachers, designate 20 teachers for two years devoted solely to RTI.  Send members of the District Leadership Team to college job fairs around the country to recruit teachers.  The travel expenses can be paid by CARES money.  We’ve written a lot about this so I’m not going to drone on but get the leadership team moving!

2. Go back to homogeneous student grouping.  I’m going to have another article on this soon to explain this in more detail, but as I mentioned earlier, the new research from University of Rochester on groups and learning is very interesting and I’m a believer.  Group students by ability - both by classroom and in small groups, allowing the lower students the opportunity to catch up and the top kids to excel.

3. Fire all the consultants except for one new group that will help us explore merit pay.  See our article on this here, and all of you teachers (Karen and Ann!) that have the immediate knee jerk reaction to criticize this initiative, do a little research first and then we can talk.

4. Look into a Khan World School-like environment in DPS to retain the brightest and possibly even attract some new top students.  (See this for more detail.)  Remember you can bring up the average by raising the upper quartile too!  And our hope is that this helps every quartile.

5. In most people's careers they see situations where throwing more people at a problem slows down the work. I'm sure we have reached the administration saturation point at DPS, and we've addressed this before. We’re sinking from our own bloat.  So, just as teachers have been forced to take positions in new buildings to keep their jobs, require half of the District Leadership Team to take teaching jobs until we fill most of the open positions.  We can get along without them and the kids need them more.

The WSJ article and the national attention are a wakeup call for Dr. Clark and the School Board.  Don’t be distracted by any spin you might hear – this is an issue appropriately about test scores, and what we do next matters to a generation of Decatur students.