Last month, 61 eighth-graders graduated from the Forest Park Middle School. Will they be prepared for high school, for college, for life?
If not, who is to blame?
My daughter graduated from Forest Park Middle School 30 years ago and later on in life she told me that her transition from middle school to high school was harder than her transition from high school to college. In other words, her time in District 91 did not adequately prepare her for the next level.
Who is to blame?
I asked that question to Rodney Alexander, who is a member and past president of the District 209 high school board, which includes Proviso East, Forest Park’s high school.
Rodney is very familiar with being blamed because the performance of Proviso East students on achievement tests is quite poor and many folks blame the board for that record.
Last year U.S. News & World Report ranked the school, just across the river from Forest Park, 477 out of 673 high schools in Illinois (#13,242 out of 17,655 nationally) based on students’ “performance on state-required tests, graduation rate and how well they prepare students for college.”
Who is to blame?
Rodney told me to look further upstream, to the feeder elementary schools, for the answer.
“What we inherit at Proviso East,” Rodney explained, “is that 60% of our freshmen come to us reading below the ninth grade level and not proficient in math.”
The statistics for our feeder schools in D91 are less than hoped for.
According to the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR), last year 19.4% of Forest Park’s D91 students did not meet the IAR readiness assessment, 24.2% were partially ready, 21.3% approached readiness expectations, and 33% met or exceeded that level.
My daughter was not well prepared for high school by her eight years in D91, and last year our elementary school district, was ranked 544 out of 823 school districts in Illinois.
Who is to blame?
Alexander contends that the feeder schools deserve the penultimate blame but added that we should look even further upstream from the feeder schools to the homes from which the students come for the ultimate answer to the question.
D91 Superintendent Elizabeth Alvarez agreed with Alexander, saying, “Parents and caregivers play a huge role in how well our children do in school.” Here are a few reasons why:
Home Environment: A supportive home where parents and caregivers provide books, a quiet place to study, and a routine helps children do better in school.
Expectations: When parents and caregivers expect their children to do well and encourage them, it boosts their motivation and performance.
Involvement: Parents and caregivers who are involved in their children’s education tend to have children who perform better.
Whose fault is it? Alexander’s answer begins with, “Parents. I’m the first teacher. Before I send my child to anyone I have to teach some things. My job is to teach them how to behave and how to work. Children learn what they see or don’t see. The temptation is to point to systems to relieve me of my responsibility.”
And maybe it’s possible to go even further upstream than the family. I moved to Forest Park in 1982 and every D91 superintendent I’ve talked to has agreed that there is a correlation between the socio-economic status of families and their children’s academic achievement.
In a piece posted on the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), David Berliner declares, “The problems of achievement among America’s poor are much more likely to be located outside the school than in it, including health care, food insecurity, pollution, family violence, neighborhood environment and poverty.
According to Alexander those factors may explain poor achievement, but they can never be used as excuses. The school board, he contends, has to meet students where they are and take them further
That’s why Dr. Alvarez focused on improvement rather than comparisons. For example, “In 2023 the district’s highest rate of improvement in proficiency was in English language arts, where their score increased by 3.9%, going from 29.2% in 2022 to 33.1% in 2023.
What frustrates Alexander is when the system in general and the teachers in particular don’t put as much effort into education as do their students.
Proviso East teachers, he said, had as big an absentee rate last year as the students, and three of the present board members received $20,000 in contributions for their campaigns from the teachers union, with whom they will negotiate contracts.
Who’s to blame is an important question but the more important question is how are we — you and I — going to respond to the situation?
There is a new book by Eddie Glaude titled, We are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For. It’s easier to blame than take personal responsibility for repairing what needs fixing
This column is an attempt at diagnosis. Let’s join in working to mitigate, if not cure the problem.