Can I say something about both Nichols & Chutes' ELA teacher teams? Both of those schools have A LOT of veteran educators that are given SOME autonomy (although more would be appreciated) to make instructional choices based on what is best for the kids sitting in front of them. Also, those particular building principals are not micromanagers. They see their role as more support-figure and less authoritative. These leaders like, believe in, and empower great teachers. They do not believe in a punitive system, and they see the damage that kind of system can do to the morale in their buildings.
There is another middle school in our community, containing many teachers who feel constantly under threat. At this middle school, teachers are made to teach subjects they know little about, with no support. They are constantly afraid they will be docked for silly, inconsequential things. They do not feel appreciated or respected by their leaders. There are not very many veteran educators there. They were displaced and dispersed years ago and continue to be moved other places - or decide to leave on their own. Why would they want to stay?
Lets talk about math. I'm no math expert, but every single D65 math teacher I've talked to in the past three years, K-8, says the same thing. The district is actively working against our educators, forcing them to adhere to scripted curriculums that frown on differentiation and are focused on worksheets and iPads. Math teachers could probably talk more eloquently about this. And finally, l want to add that I think standardized tests are worthless and terrible. TTYL.
I can't speak for all parents but we hate the scripted curriculums as much as the teachers. Education depends on the relationship between the teacher and the student, and nobody wants the administrators in the middle. This is true at the college level (where I teach) all the way down to elementary education. Our District has amazing educators and good administrators know how to get out of the way.
Yes! The only thing I’ll add is that they also know how to support educators, especially new and inexperienced ones. We all get tired and burned out from time to time. Feeling supported and understood is vital. It’s like leadership 101.
This is a well known issue at Haven and I’ve heard as much from current teachers and people who have left the district due to their experience with Haven leadership. Do we know if anyone is actively working to address this? Is there anything anyone CAN do?
The public corruption in District 65 under Superintendent Devon Horton from 2020-2023 and subsequent failure to sweep out allies and appointees of Horton may have something to do with this. Evanston focuses on performative politics rather than academic performance.
I haven't seen the board push back at all on Horton ally Turner. Its super disappointing. And Turner has led the charge on closing schools, going back to when they signed with SCS on 12/6/24, Turner was pushing school closures. (And after that guest essay today in RT, I do wonder if they are pushing 6th ward closures to force kids in Foster - maybe Foster enrollment numbers aren't great). She has free reign and no one is holding her accountable or pushing back.
I was absolutely shocked when the board actually asked for numbers to be rerun for SACC summer childcare - and only when Biz flagged the program only has 62 kids but Turner was asking for 30 staff.
Yes I saw your comment, well done!! The board at this one particular meeting (finally) had the discussion “keep it but increase fees to make it self sustainable”. And that needs to be the motto for nearly everything that is “extra” going forward since they crashed our financial ship and we are now getting battered by the waves of not having money for practically anything.
Turner is pushing school closures cause the alternative is cutting excess administrative, which for a Supt is her friends and family (she hired her sister as some sort of HR executive administrator).
Horton's and Turner's leadership is definitely a leading cause of such a dramatic decline.
Literacy and numeracy scores have fallen steadily, year by year, everywhere in the nation since 2015, the year touch screen devices were made widely available to homes and schools. Twenge's data analysis reveals the decline is causative, not correlative, with device use, as are the statistically significant increases in attention issues and mental health issues for kids.
I teach in the #1 ranked public high school in the country, and our test scores have fallen every year for a decade too, with a statistically significant decline since 2022, the year AI became widely available. Our data won't make the news because our absolute scores are still high relative to the state, but it's a real problem that I promise you no administrators are doing anything about (and they are deaf to teachers' requests to remove devices from the learning environment).
Haidt also points to data that lower income families on average give kids more screen time, as they may not have the flexible resources to pay for all the enrichment opportunities more resourced families use. Schools can make up the difference with enriching learning experiences, but that's not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Turner's leadership.
D65 distributes iPads in kindergarten, and I expect this and other myriad issues will not be addressed by the current inept upper admin.
There are some parents doing good stuff fighting the overuse of technology in the classroom here in Evanston. I think we may be able to get ahead of the curve nationally on some of this before it’s too late. I never sign petitions but I signed theirs. https://www.change.org/p/limit-screens-for-district-65-students
I was watching Wilmette school board meeting last month and the parents were complaining about the overuse of technology. Sadly we can't even get to that subject because of all the massive corruption and unnecessary multiple school closures.
I'm hopeful once we can get past the immediate crisis that we can turn the canons to educational outcomes. The IAR test results this year were dismal and I think there is genuine desire on the board to improve by removing all the expensive and not performing technology... banning cell phones this year was an easy win.
The common dominator under Horton and Turner, who predates both of them, is Stacey Beardsley. Her title has changed many times. She holds the strings, not purse. The public hasn’t yet connected the dots to ask/ demand the Board to relieve her of the opportunity to serve the community.
I agree, but I’m hopeful her problematic involvement is getting noticed more than I ever anticipated. A speaker at last week’s board meeting called her out directly and I know several people that have emailed the board and asked for her removal from the school closure decisions.
The key problem is the math curricula from the past 10+ years which have changed multiple times and have been almost uniformly terrible. Dr. Stacey Beardsley is who has led the selection of these sub-par curricula and the disruptive, expensive, and time-consuming implementation of them. She also dragged her feet on introducing phonics - my high schooler never got ANY phonics instruction. It’s time for her to move on and be replaced by a thoughtful education leader who understands current research on what curricula work. From my personal experience, the pursuit of “equity” has led to very low academic rigor and little student accountability in middle school classrooms. This is happening at ETHS, too.
My kid is in 5th grade and I feel like we've seen at least three different math curricula in District 65 during our time here. They had a pretty decent one in 2022 but its completely different now. The whiplash I think is the problem here.
My kid also saw at least 3 math curriculum changes while at D65, not including the middle school Desmo/ iPad math debacle. Funny how once you get to ETHS, math is exclusively on paper.
I know this is way out in left field, but testing is just not a great way to asses student learning. Growing up, I was 99th percentile on every test. Took those ACTs and SATs without a problem.
It helps that I went to a Catholic school in the '80s and '90s. I didn't learn math the way kids learn it today, I memorized my multiplication tables and learned to regurgitate them. As I did with many things.
Now I ended up doing all right in the end, but I will say that it was kind of a nasty shock when I got to college and suddenly realized that I'd never really learned how to think critically or write a research paper.
And I'm not saying that I don't think things could be better in our school district. I'm just saying, I know plenty of brilliant people in my life now who were absolute crap at standardized tests.
I am a social worker married to a teacher in the district. There are many extenuating factors that influence the kids who are testing lower. These factors are not addressed by the tests. The comparison to the schools whose students come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and don’t have the privileges the kids from affluent backgrounds do.
Several decades of results mapped to the various initiatives. So far nothing has worked.
My personal bugbear is that I truly believe [with no evidence] going to a year round model would be a gigantic boon to the education system. While I'd prefer to increase instructional days alongside that, I don't even think that's needed - just spreading out the days off would help fight the learning loss over summer, which is presumably hardest on families without extra resources.
Oof the comments on that story. I've been critical of Mark in the past but his data analysis work on that story is admirable. I hadn't seen that before.
RE: instructional time. Call me crazy but it seems like the #1 way to solve this issue is more instruction? We've tried every buzzword, trend, and software package promising to solve this issue and nothing has worked.
Having multiple curricula over several years is the problem. Implementing a new curriculum takes years—literally. In year one, teachers need time to implement with fidelity, collaborate with the math facilitator, and refine lessons based on what works. Over the summer, facilitators review and adjust, and in year two, updated training and classroom observations continue the process.
Reading straight from the teacher’s resource guide is not teaching. Students don’t benefit unless lessons are differentiated to meet their interests and abilities. A district must choose the best possible resource—selected with input from experienced educators—and then commit to implementing and refining it over time.
Done well, this process transforms how teachers teach and how students learn. I’ve seen it work. It was a beautiful thing.
Random story I never ran, one of the other north shore districts, I want to say D27 but I don’t remember exactly (it doesn’t matter for the story) changed the curriculum. Within a year, the test scores dropped and the parents up there were ready to burn down the administration building. District kept it and 2-3 years later, scores returned to normal. Like any big organization, it takes time and resources to scale and train staff, and teachers need a year or two to figure out how to optimize around it. This is true on the college level too, it takes me 2 semesters to get good at teaching something new and I write my own damn curriculum!
This requires an investment in the long haul, patience/discipline, and a concerted investment in professional development. D65s classic thing is to redo the curriculum and then waste the PD money on Horton pals.
Maybe we’ve turned a new leaf and there is an opportunity to do this right, like some of the ELA successes
Do we know how much of the increased ELA proficiency scores are due to the changes in cut scores and how much is due to actual increased growth and learning? Also, glad you are coming around to Mark Collins’ research/article. it’s very detailed and steeped in data and quite a long time frame. His extensive experience in a HS setting is also valuable and adds weight to his arguments and thoughts.
Tracking changes in test scores over time isn't hard to analyze, and there ought to be enough students in each school and grade to do so. I think the correct analysis would be a repeated measures ANOVA. I asked for these data with a FOIA two or three years ago. However, D65's concerns about anonymity precluded this analysis. All I could show was that scores on one test were highly correlated with scores on the next test, which isn't surprising.
Yeah, I guess you're right that you could (in theory) figure out the errors here and back into a p-value of some kind but I'm happy saying +/- 15% is probably significant but +/-5% is probably not
Can I say something about both Nichols & Chutes' ELA teacher teams? Both of those schools have A LOT of veteran educators that are given SOME autonomy (although more would be appreciated) to make instructional choices based on what is best for the kids sitting in front of them. Also, those particular building principals are not micromanagers. They see their role as more support-figure and less authoritative. These leaders like, believe in, and empower great teachers. They do not believe in a punitive system, and they see the damage that kind of system can do to the morale in their buildings.
There is another middle school in our community, containing many teachers who feel constantly under threat. At this middle school, teachers are made to teach subjects they know little about, with no support. They are constantly afraid they will be docked for silly, inconsequential things. They do not feel appreciated or respected by their leaders. There are not very many veteran educators there. They were displaced and dispersed years ago and continue to be moved other places - or decide to leave on their own. Why would they want to stay?
Lets talk about math. I'm no math expert, but every single D65 math teacher I've talked to in the past three years, K-8, says the same thing. The district is actively working against our educators, forcing them to adhere to scripted curriculums that frown on differentiation and are focused on worksheets and iPads. Math teachers could probably talk more eloquently about this. And finally, l want to add that I think standardized tests are worthless and terrible. TTYL.
I can't speak for all parents but we hate the scripted curriculums as much as the teachers. Education depends on the relationship between the teacher and the student, and nobody wants the administrators in the middle. This is true at the college level (where I teach) all the way down to elementary education. Our District has amazing educators and good administrators know how to get out of the way.
Yes! The only thing I’ll add is that they also know how to support educators, especially new and inexperienced ones. We all get tired and burned out from time to time. Feeling supported and understood is vital. It’s like leadership 101.
This is a well known issue at Haven and I’ve heard as much from current teachers and people who have left the district due to their experience with Haven leadership. Do we know if anyone is actively working to address this? Is there anything anyone CAN do?
The public corruption in District 65 under Superintendent Devon Horton from 2020-2023 and subsequent failure to sweep out allies and appointees of Horton may have something to do with this. Evanston focuses on performative politics rather than academic performance.
Isn’t the Board supposed to be the oversight? Where was the breakdown?
I haven't seen the board push back at all on Horton ally Turner. Its super disappointing. And Turner has led the charge on closing schools, going back to when they signed with SCS on 12/6/24, Turner was pushing school closures. (And after that guest essay today in RT, I do wonder if they are pushing 6th ward closures to force kids in Foster - maybe Foster enrollment numbers aren't great). She has free reign and no one is holding her accountable or pushing back.
I was absolutely shocked when the board actually asked for numbers to be rerun for SACC summer childcare - and only when Biz flagged the program only has 62 kids but Turner was asking for 30 staff.
My kid and I went and gave public comment to save that summer program. It is a shame that they're trying to kill it.
Yes I saw your comment, well done!! The board at this one particular meeting (finally) had the discussion “keep it but increase fees to make it self sustainable”. And that needs to be the motto for nearly everything that is “extra” going forward since they crashed our financial ship and we are now getting battered by the waves of not having money for practically anything.
They make money off the program now, at this point it’s just the admins that don’t want to support it
Turner is pushing school closures cause the alternative is cutting excess administrative, which for a Supt is her friends and family (she hired her sister as some sort of HR executive administrator).
Horton's and Turner's leadership is definitely a leading cause of such a dramatic decline.
Literacy and numeracy scores have fallen steadily, year by year, everywhere in the nation since 2015, the year touch screen devices were made widely available to homes and schools. Twenge's data analysis reveals the decline is causative, not correlative, with device use, as are the statistically significant increases in attention issues and mental health issues for kids.
I teach in the #1 ranked public high school in the country, and our test scores have fallen every year for a decade too, with a statistically significant decline since 2022, the year AI became widely available. Our data won't make the news because our absolute scores are still high relative to the state, but it's a real problem that I promise you no administrators are doing anything about (and they are deaf to teachers' requests to remove devices from the learning environment).
Haidt also points to data that lower income families on average give kids more screen time, as they may not have the flexible resources to pay for all the enrichment opportunities more resourced families use. Schools can make up the difference with enriching learning experiences, but that's not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Turner's leadership.
D65 distributes iPads in kindergarten, and I expect this and other myriad issues will not be addressed by the current inept upper admin.
There are some parents doing good stuff fighting the overuse of technology in the classroom here in Evanston. I think we may be able to get ahead of the curve nationally on some of this before it’s too late. I never sign petitions but I signed theirs. https://www.change.org/p/limit-screens-for-district-65-students
I was watching Wilmette school board meeting last month and the parents were complaining about the overuse of technology. Sadly we can't even get to that subject because of all the massive corruption and unnecessary multiple school closures.
I'm hopeful once we can get past the immediate crisis that we can turn the canons to educational outcomes. The IAR test results this year were dismal and I think there is genuine desire on the board to improve by removing all the expensive and not performing technology... banning cell phones this year was an easy win.
The common dominator under Horton and Turner, who predates both of them, is Stacey Beardsley. Her title has changed many times. She holds the strings, not purse. The public hasn’t yet connected the dots to ask/ demand the Board to relieve her of the opportunity to serve the community.
I agree, but I’m hopeful her problematic involvement is getting noticed more than I ever anticipated. A speaker at last week’s board meeting called her out directly and I know several people that have emailed the board and asked for her removal from the school closure decisions.
The key problem is the math curricula from the past 10+ years which have changed multiple times and have been almost uniformly terrible. Dr. Stacey Beardsley is who has led the selection of these sub-par curricula and the disruptive, expensive, and time-consuming implementation of them. She also dragged her feet on introducing phonics - my high schooler never got ANY phonics instruction. It’s time for her to move on and be replaced by a thoughtful education leader who understands current research on what curricula work. From my personal experience, the pursuit of “equity” has led to very low academic rigor and little student accountability in middle school classrooms. This is happening at ETHS, too.
My kid is in 5th grade and I feel like we've seen at least three different math curricula in District 65 during our time here. They had a pretty decent one in 2022 but its completely different now. The whiplash I think is the problem here.
My kid also saw at least 3 math curriculum changes while at D65, not including the middle school Desmo/ iPad math debacle. Funny how once you get to ETHS, math is exclusively on paper.
Tom's Uninformed Parent Rankings of D65 Math Curricula ranked from worst to best
3) Whatever they were doing in 2020 on ipads with the apps that had the penguin he had to guide around.
2) Whatever they are doing now, which is closer to a classical math curricula that most parents learned 30 years ago
1) Whatever they did in 2022, which was new math, but actually landed pretty well with my kid.
He's learned so many different ways to do the same problem
Dear God don't remind me about JiJi
YES JIJI - I was trying to remember the name. ST Math is not a good learning tool and I will die on this hill.
https://nautil.us/does-a-cartoon-penguin-make-math-education-great-again-236360/
I know this is way out in left field, but testing is just not a great way to asses student learning. Growing up, I was 99th percentile on every test. Took those ACTs and SATs without a problem.
It helps that I went to a Catholic school in the '80s and '90s. I didn't learn math the way kids learn it today, I memorized my multiplication tables and learned to regurgitate them. As I did with many things.
Now I ended up doing all right in the end, but I will say that it was kind of a nasty shock when I got to college and suddenly realized that I'd never really learned how to think critically or write a research paper.
And I'm not saying that I don't think things could be better in our school district. I'm just saying, I know plenty of brilliant people in my life now who were absolute crap at standardized tests.
I am a social worker married to a teacher in the district. There are many extenuating factors that influence the kids who are testing lower. These factors are not addressed by the tests. The comparison to the schools whose students come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and don’t have the privileges the kids from affluent backgrounds do.
Oh hey! We had the same results. They got worse got worse under Horton
As to the achievement gap generally, this is for D202 and not 65 but I found it illuminating:
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2024/04/14/guest-essay-rethinking-eths-approach-to-gaps-in-achievement/
Several decades of results mapped to the various initiatives. So far nothing has worked.
My personal bugbear is that I truly believe [with no evidence] going to a year round model would be a gigantic boon to the education system. While I'd prefer to increase instructional days alongside that, I don't even think that's needed - just spreading out the days off would help fight the learning loss over summer, which is presumably hardest on families without extra resources.
Oof the comments on that story. I've been critical of Mark in the past but his data analysis work on that story is admirable. I hadn't seen that before.
RE: instructional time. Call me crazy but it seems like the #1 way to solve this issue is more instruction? We've tried every buzzword, trend, and software package promising to solve this issue and nothing has worked.
A friend sent me this some time ago. TL; DR we may need to modulate our expectations. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-doesnt-work-20
Excellent write up. You are a breath of fresh air! Thanks.
Having multiple curricula over several years is the problem. Implementing a new curriculum takes years—literally. In year one, teachers need time to implement with fidelity, collaborate with the math facilitator, and refine lessons based on what works. Over the summer, facilitators review and adjust, and in year two, updated training and classroom observations continue the process.
Reading straight from the teacher’s resource guide is not teaching. Students don’t benefit unless lessons are differentiated to meet their interests and abilities. A district must choose the best possible resource—selected with input from experienced educators—and then commit to implementing and refining it over time.
Done well, this process transforms how teachers teach and how students learn. I’ve seen it work. It was a beautiful thing.
Random story I never ran, one of the other north shore districts, I want to say D27 but I don’t remember exactly (it doesn’t matter for the story) changed the curriculum. Within a year, the test scores dropped and the parents up there were ready to burn down the administration building. District kept it and 2-3 years later, scores returned to normal. Like any big organization, it takes time and resources to scale and train staff, and teachers need a year or two to figure out how to optimize around it. This is true on the college level too, it takes me 2 semesters to get good at teaching something new and I write my own damn curriculum!
This requires an investment in the long haul, patience/discipline, and a concerted investment in professional development. D65s classic thing is to redo the curriculum and then waste the PD money on Horton pals.
Maybe we’ve turned a new leaf and there is an opportunity to do this right, like some of the ELA successes
Foster School is going to be quite the case study. I'm optimistic about it, but there's a heavy load to carry.
Do we know how much of the increased ELA proficiency scores are due to the changes in cut scores and how much is due to actual increased growth and learning? Also, glad you are coming around to Mark Collins’ research/article. it’s very detailed and steeped in data and quite a long time frame. His extensive experience in a HS setting is also valuable and adds weight to his arguments and thoughts.
3 relevant articles to this topic:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/03/isbe-education-illinois-proficiency-test-scores/
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2024/04/14/guest-essay-rethinking-eths-approach-to-gaps-in-achievement/
https://www.oakpark.com/2023/08/22/a-schools-purpose/
Omar quits: https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/11/02/letter-i-am-stepping-down-from-the-district-65-school-board/
To bad about Omar quiting as he seemed to be one of the reform-minded folks.
Thanks for sharing Tom, appreciate you!
Tracking changes in test scores over time isn't hard to analyze, and there ought to be enough students in each school and grade to do so. I think the correct analysis would be a repeated measures ANOVA. I asked for these data with a FOIA two or three years ago. However, D65's concerns about anonymity precluded this analysis. All I could show was that scores on one test were highly correlated with scores on the next test, which isn't surprising.
Yeah, I guess you're right that you could (in theory) figure out the errors here and back into a p-value of some kind but I'm happy saying +/- 15% is probably significant but +/-5% is probably not