I know I will not shut up about math. But when I see what is possible with good math instruction and extra tutoring, it actually shocks the conscience. My children enrolled at Mathnasium after receiving sub-par instruction at D65 (for a myriad of reasons). It was life-changing. My one child went up almost sixty percentage points on the MAP test! This goes to show that the amount of time we spend on math is crucial. How we spend that time is equally important. If kids are throwing stuff, swearing at teachers and yelling during math instruction, that math instruction simply will not be productive.
This is not rocket science. It is such an easy fix: math is the priority. MATH IS THE PRIORITY! There I said it. In all caps. I cannot stand the narrative some kids aren’t good at math. I hate that. I hate that narrative. It is lazy and it sucks.
I understand not everyone can enroll in extra tutoring. But if we brought the tutors to the school and made it a priority so much could be possible.
Thank you!! I could not agree more that if we understood how important math is, and how it really takes extra support, excellent instruction. more people would be good at math and our society would greatly benefit from this universal language
I'll tell you how to fix it - hire more teachers! One teacher for 22 kids, each with wildly different social, emotional and academic needs doesn't cut it anymore. There are not enough wobble stools, new curriculums, differentiated instruction or administrators to address all the needs in one classroom.
The more I learn about school districts the more I am becoming a zealot for: the best way to improve test scores and close the achievement gap is to do more teaching. More teachers, more supports, more autonomy, and less administrators in the way. We don't need fancy new curricula or a top-down focus on social justice - we need to maximize the instruction time between teachers and children.
I totally agree with this, but it becomes a very interesting political conversation because the left (of which I am staunchly a part) is responsible for a lot of compliance requirements that end up bloating administration. Very little of it is easy to dismiss as unnecessary (or bad, for that matter), but it all adds up. When you have to track and report a million data points, that takes people, and those people aren't in classrooms. They're fulfilling state requirements on x,y, and z.
Yeah I agree. One piece of information I often bring up when people talk about the administrative bloat is the number of requirements that the State of IL continues to add onto the District without providing additional funding. This is true on the reporting and legal side, but also pre-K, and also special education. It's easy for the legislature to pass new rules without providing any support.
This was my big criticism of the affordable housing stuff too (story from the other day), which is that the state is passing the costs off to lower governments with very little support.
At some point I'm starting to wonder where that 5% IL income tax actually goes...
Here, I cheated with an AI search: Which country has the best early education?
Answer:
Finland is frequently cited as having the best elementary education due to its high-quality, equity-focused system that prioritizes critical thinking and teacher training over standardized testing. Other countries that often rank highly for their elementary education are Switzerland, Singapore, Japan, and Estonia.
Finland
High-quality teachers: Teachers are required to have master's degrees and are given significant autonomy.
Focus on well-being: The system is designed to be less stressful for students, with less emphasis on standardized testing in the early years.
Emphasis on equity: Education is free and fully funded from early childhood through university, including materials, meals, and transportation, to ensure universal access.
Critical thinking: The curriculum focuses on critical thinking, creativity, and peer collaboration.
Not advocating $100k professional development trips to Finland and Estonia (per the CPS OIG report), but maybe we could take a cue from these places and consider that our early education system has been hijacked by hyper-capitalism (like everything else) and student/teacher burnout, grade inflation and low levels of actual learning are symptoms of that. Have you noticed your kids don't talk about doing Math, Science or English at school, but rather refer to these age-old subjects by the brand name of the current curriculum? I might be fixated on this, but - that's capitalism! More instruction time is great, but under what circumstances? In my view, there is no fancy new curriculum in the Foster School vision (https://drive.google.com/file/d/17DGfuS2Blhv6fak-R2O4WwF9H2_S7hzv/view). These are basics about how to create a nourishing learning environment that promotes an intrinsic love of school (i.e., learning), rather than obsessing about test scores.
But again, execution is key! Will the proper planning and resources be dedicated to the Foster vision so it could become something of a laboratory for re-invigorating all of D65? Education is always changing - it's an experimental field by nature. This era of cramming in more content and judging success on test scores is played out if you ask me.
Each of the countries you mention has a parental culture highly focussed on personal responsibility, discipline, strong work ethic and meritocracy as well as progressive teaching methods….and in each of these countries education is highly valued - across socio economic parent groups - with high levels of parental involvement. Additionally, the rates of children raised in single family homes in these countries is typically low - in the single digits or low teens typically. Over 50% of black students in the US grow up in single family homes. To achieve success with the progressive educational models - and to ensure the best possible outcomes for all our students - do we also need to adopt policies which seek to address these cultural factors?
I talk to a lot of black families in Evanston. They want the exact same thing for their kids as the white families. I would argue there is a big misalignment right now between what the parents want and what the school district thinks they want.
Yes! Like, how many actual in-depth conversations (not online surveys; not one-time large community meetings) have taken place to find out what parents/caregivers and kids who experience the “achievement gap” everyone is constantly referencing think would be helpful? How can a school district actually help or advocate for help that’s beyond the scope of their work? D65 can’t solve the effects of a century of socially-engineered income inequality (hello, redlining) or the prison industrial complex, or etc etc. Of course it would help to address these factors, which are SOCIOECONOMIC factors, reflective of a broader culture of runaway capitalism with racism embedded in it. Yes, most other wealthy countries (Finland for example) have more family-friendly policies than ours, like paid leave, universal childcare and healthcare. Our struggling public schools are a symptom of a culture/government that pays lip service to caring about families while actively neglecting them.
This is why I don’t get the somewhat singular focus on high utilization of D65 schools - that pushes class sizes higher when smaller class sizes benefit kids and learning. D65 needs to figure out a way to minimize administration costs (e.g. multiple HR positions for a school district of this size and most employees have the same job function…out of curiosity has anyone compared the admin positions for D65 with those of ETHS? It’s not strictly comparable but still).
The UCSD study speaks volumes. It made me reflect on this: When our oldest graduated from ETHS, the superintendent asked every kid with a 4.0 or higher to stand. I swear over 75% of kids stood. Everyone cheered wildly —to be honest, my heart sank. Not even remotely possible. I remember thinking —not only that this was a joke but that, very seriously, it was the kids who weren’t served —and were actually hurt —by shenanigans like this. How are they going to make it in college? I wondered how many ETHS kids never get thru the rigors of university—set up to think they’re ready a when they’re not. (This is not to say that college is for every kid, of course.)
I don’t know how to get after the truth but something definitely stinks. In our backyard. And critically —it’s not doing Evanston kids any favors.
Hi folks. I'll throw my hat in the ring. I write as an Evanston resident and 30+ year teacher in a local district extremely similar to Evanston.
In my opinion all of these issues currently facing Evanston's schools, from K-12, will not get resolved until the collective citizens of the community come to a specific, definable, and easily understood agreement about what a school's purpose is.
For sake of debate I propose:
Schools should make it unequivocally clear that their foremost (singular) purpose is to provide for and support the exploration and passing along of ACADEMIC(*) knowledge. Additionally, schools should make it clear that the study of knowledge – sharing, exploring, questioning, evaluating, and absorbing it – occurs fundamentally between teacher and student and primarily in the classroom – a school’s “sacred space”. There's no reason that, if shared in a dynamic and open way, knowledge can't be endlessly fascinating and impactful for ALL students regardless of age, background, life plans, or professional aspirations.
(*) It's critical of course that the word "academic" gets defined, otherwise people will quickly diverge in their expectations. So, I'll jump in and say that "academic" means math, science, reading and writing (literature), history (social studies), world languages, art (studio), music and, in Illinois at least, physical education.
None of this is to say that other issues in a child's development - social, moral, emotional and cultural - are not important. They ABSOLUTELY are. However, the insertion of highly complex, sensitive and, invariably political, issues into our schools has crowded out the focus on academics. From my experience and from looking at extensive research on this topic, expecting schools to take on, let alone fix, such a complicated and expanding set of expectations has been largely unsuccessful. Unsuccessful NOT because our administrators, teachers and students haven’t been deeply engaged in their resolution. Instead, it’s because our schools are not experts at nor fundamentally capable of effectively impacting (on a macro and sustained level) the economic, cultural, and, ultimately, familial forces that actually determine one’s foundational development and classroom success. Institutions outside of our schools -governmental, religious, cultural, community, etc. - must take on a greater role and allow schools to do their job (academic learning) at the highest level.
Let's be crystal clear about a school's purpose and uncouple our schools from those issues over which they have little to no reasonable control nor the essential skills or training to address.
Sorry Tom, but I’m failing to see your view that instruction is an afterthought in the Foster School presentation. From my view, there is a guiding philosophy of inquiry-led, whole child, collaborative learning. If this can be implemented with foresight and fidelity, it sounds great to me. I think an obsession with testing and scores and cramming as much content into our kids as possible is how we’ve lost sight of who school is for. Kids need to feel like people at school, not achievement robots. I’ve encountered classrooms where first graders aren’t allowed a midday snack and thought: Why not?! Wouldn’t you rather take 10 mins to help a kid get regulated in this most basic way than push through in favor of more instruction time? Of course any instructional philosophy can be done badly, especially if not equipped with the right resources, but if this is how Foster curriculum is being conceptualized, it looks like a good start to me. (What do I know about kids though, as a mom of two, therapist and social worker who’s studied child development (second career, after a decade in finance/marketing, so I can also do math and know it’s important)? Yes, D65 does need to re-examine how we see students and I think this is an encouraging start.
Sadly, it's not just math. For several years, I taught grammar & writing at an I-won't-name-it college in Chicago to first- and second-year students. Before I started this, it had never occurred to me that I'd have to explain the difference between nouns and verbs – but yes, I did. These folks were getting passed along from year to year in their elementary and high school years without learning basic English. I used fourth- and fifth-grade grammar books for some of my exercises.
As sad as this report is, there's no need to panic. Time to roll up sleeves and follow what works. A simple formula of holding everyone accountable-school and home- will improve student learning. We should be using ungraded primaries; when students have the skills for 4th grade, that's when they move. If students don't behave in school, parents sit with her/him in class. And content matters. No purchased canned programs. Teachers should be capable of creating lessons based on standards and student need. The focus should be on work. Conferences should center on student work. Parents need to do their part by limiting all devices and spend time at home on reading, discussion, finishing assignments.
Also time for parents to realize they shouldn't rely on grades to understand learning. I agree with Truth Seeker here. Having 75% of students receive 4.0 is meaningless. Time for serious teaching!
Given the focus of this post on other school systems, and that you note you are preparing a post on the neighborhood-schools group proposal - providing information on another school system because it is footnoted as an example of committing to neighborhood learning centers in that IINS proposal - Akron (source links below).
Back in 2002, Akron undertook a massive initiative to update its at-the-time 58 public schools, totaling $800 million. Akron is not equivalent to Evanston demographically; it has a much lower MHI (absolute and relative to the state MHI) and much higher poverty rate, along with more than double the overall population. Likely as a result, the State of Ohio appears to have taken on a significant portion of the cost of this overall - roughly 60% - and if I'm reading the agreement correctly, has an ownership stake in both the remaining school buildings and the land.
Moreover, the local cost-share of $365 million was/is funded by a 0.25% local income tax increase, agreed upon by referendum.
And as part of this undertaking, Akron closed over a quarter of its existing school buildings while constructing new schools, largely driven by long-term census losses, according to one news article ending up at a total of 42 schools. By my calcs, that's roughly a proportionate % decrease in buildings to % decrease in overall census. The State appears to have had a bar of 350 students for receiving state funding to support a given school's updates; some of the closed Akron schools had under 200 students. It also appears that the school system may have been running out of money to complete the Master Plan prior to the pandemic - citing escalating construction costs even then. And bigger picture, the demographic make-up of Akron has been shifting over time since 2000; I'll let others look into and sit with how.
I do not provide this picture because I enjoy breaking down these numbers and refuting examples. I am deeply distressed by the state of Evanston's schools - and community bigger picture, including massive hurdles to affordable housing at the base of our schools. But as someone who has worked in matters of complex public policy for over 20 years, I think we need to acknowledge head-on the very stark reality and challenges that we and others are facing, and not avoid discussing when other systems have made hard decisions. Thankfully this info on Akron was pretty easy to find via a few quick Google searches, so the information is there if we want to seek it. Hope providing this picture is helpful, if not easy to sit with.
Weighing in again after my brother - a 20-year public high school math teacher in Massachusetts - shared this article about what screens are doing to education, saying that screen use in education is one of the major reasons he left his career recently. It's not just time spent on "academics," it's spending it off of screens in the classroom. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/opinion/laptop-classroom-test-scores.html
The only educational blueprint that I have found that has proven and consistent success at improving the educational outcomes for all students, including recent immigrants for whom English is a second language, students from varied racial backgrounds and low income backgrounds is the Micaela School in London. It was profiled by the left leaning German Newspaper Die Zeit….https://youtu.be/h9SdG0BkpLg?si=H7ULlO6KKr4vAyxM
how in the world are national issues ok to talk about suddenly, but when it was related to all the issues that lead to these results, this site censored everyone that even remotely brought anything up related to it. sad
I can’t stand SEL, it takes up valuable time that could be spent on core subjects such as science or more in-depth math work. After all, learning time is really only maybe four hours a day after you take out recess, gym, and lunch. But this reminds me of a podcast series I’m finally listening to “Sold a Story” about how liberals backed the whole word approach for learning how to read despite tons of evidence coming out that teaching phonics was a superior method. Millions of kids were cheated out of learning to read the better way.
I have nothing against SEL and I respect that there are some kids who need more emotional support than others, especially at the K-3 levels. I just think we need to find a way to augment the instruction if we're devoting a lot of time to SEL. My kid has gym class every day in D65 - I had it 2x a week when I was a kid and the parochial schools here also do it 2x a week. That's a lot of instructional time that is lost and then .. unsurprisingly, it shows up in the test scores.
I know I will not shut up about math. But when I see what is possible with good math instruction and extra tutoring, it actually shocks the conscience. My children enrolled at Mathnasium after receiving sub-par instruction at D65 (for a myriad of reasons). It was life-changing. My one child went up almost sixty percentage points on the MAP test! This goes to show that the amount of time we spend on math is crucial. How we spend that time is equally important. If kids are throwing stuff, swearing at teachers and yelling during math instruction, that math instruction simply will not be productive.
This is not rocket science. It is such an easy fix: math is the priority. MATH IS THE PRIORITY! There I said it. In all caps. I cannot stand the narrative some kids aren’t good at math. I hate that. I hate that narrative. It is lazy and it sucks.
I understand not everyone can enroll in extra tutoring. But if we brought the tutors to the school and made it a priority so much could be possible.
Thank you!! I could not agree more that if we understood how important math is, and how it really takes extra support, excellent instruction. more people would be good at math and our society would greatly benefit from this universal language
I'll tell you how to fix it - hire more teachers! One teacher for 22 kids, each with wildly different social, emotional and academic needs doesn't cut it anymore. There are not enough wobble stools, new curriculums, differentiated instruction or administrators to address all the needs in one classroom.
The more I learn about school districts the more I am becoming a zealot for: the best way to improve test scores and close the achievement gap is to do more teaching. More teachers, more supports, more autonomy, and less administrators in the way. We don't need fancy new curricula or a top-down focus on social justice - we need to maximize the instruction time between teachers and children.
I totally agree with this, but it becomes a very interesting political conversation because the left (of which I am staunchly a part) is responsible for a lot of compliance requirements that end up bloating administration. Very little of it is easy to dismiss as unnecessary (or bad, for that matter), but it all adds up. When you have to track and report a million data points, that takes people, and those people aren't in classrooms. They're fulfilling state requirements on x,y, and z.
Yeah I agree. One piece of information I often bring up when people talk about the administrative bloat is the number of requirements that the State of IL continues to add onto the District without providing additional funding. This is true on the reporting and legal side, but also pre-K, and also special education. It's easy for the legislature to pass new rules without providing any support.
This was my big criticism of the affordable housing stuff too (story from the other day), which is that the state is passing the costs off to lower governments with very little support.
At some point I'm starting to wonder where that 5% IL income tax actually goes...
The road to insolvency is paved with good intentions. That could be the name of a book I write about higher education in retirement someday.
Here, I cheated with an AI search: Which country has the best early education?
Answer:
Finland is frequently cited as having the best elementary education due to its high-quality, equity-focused system that prioritizes critical thinking and teacher training over standardized testing. Other countries that often rank highly for their elementary education are Switzerland, Singapore, Japan, and Estonia.
Finland
High-quality teachers: Teachers are required to have master's degrees and are given significant autonomy.
Focus on well-being: The system is designed to be less stressful for students, with less emphasis on standardized testing in the early years.
Emphasis on equity: Education is free and fully funded from early childhood through university, including materials, meals, and transportation, to ensure universal access.
Critical thinking: The curriculum focuses on critical thinking, creativity, and peer collaboration.
Not advocating $100k professional development trips to Finland and Estonia (per the CPS OIG report), but maybe we could take a cue from these places and consider that our early education system has been hijacked by hyper-capitalism (like everything else) and student/teacher burnout, grade inflation and low levels of actual learning are symptoms of that. Have you noticed your kids don't talk about doing Math, Science or English at school, but rather refer to these age-old subjects by the brand name of the current curriculum? I might be fixated on this, but - that's capitalism! More instruction time is great, but under what circumstances? In my view, there is no fancy new curriculum in the Foster School vision (https://drive.google.com/file/d/17DGfuS2Blhv6fak-R2O4WwF9H2_S7hzv/view). These are basics about how to create a nourishing learning environment that promotes an intrinsic love of school (i.e., learning), rather than obsessing about test scores.
But again, execution is key! Will the proper planning and resources be dedicated to the Foster vision so it could become something of a laboratory for re-invigorating all of D65? Education is always changing - it's an experimental field by nature. This era of cramming in more content and judging success on test scores is played out if you ask me.
My son referred to "Great Minds" the other day when talking about his math homework!
My favorite is “Heggerty”. Sorry, who?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/magazine/youth-mental-health-crisis-schools.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3k8.qW4q.JSoDl3EcgAXo&smid=url-share
Putting this here.
Each of the countries you mention has a parental culture highly focussed on personal responsibility, discipline, strong work ethic and meritocracy as well as progressive teaching methods….and in each of these countries education is highly valued - across socio economic parent groups - with high levels of parental involvement. Additionally, the rates of children raised in single family homes in these countries is typically low - in the single digits or low teens typically. Over 50% of black students in the US grow up in single family homes. To achieve success with the progressive educational models - and to ensure the best possible outcomes for all our students - do we also need to adopt policies which seek to address these cultural factors?
I talk to a lot of black families in Evanston. They want the exact same thing for their kids as the white families. I would argue there is a big misalignment right now between what the parents want and what the school district thinks they want.
Yes! Like, how many actual in-depth conversations (not online surveys; not one-time large community meetings) have taken place to find out what parents/caregivers and kids who experience the “achievement gap” everyone is constantly referencing think would be helpful? How can a school district actually help or advocate for help that’s beyond the scope of their work? D65 can’t solve the effects of a century of socially-engineered income inequality (hello, redlining) or the prison industrial complex, or etc etc. Of course it would help to address these factors, which are SOCIOECONOMIC factors, reflective of a broader culture of runaway capitalism with racism embedded in it. Yes, most other wealthy countries (Finland for example) have more family-friendly policies than ours, like paid leave, universal childcare and healthcare. Our struggling public schools are a symptom of a culture/government that pays lip service to caring about families while actively neglecting them.
Those countries all have high quality students.
This is why I don’t get the somewhat singular focus on high utilization of D65 schools - that pushes class sizes higher when smaller class sizes benefit kids and learning. D65 needs to figure out a way to minimize administration costs (e.g. multiple HR positions for a school district of this size and most employees have the same job function…out of curiosity has anyone compared the admin positions for D65 with those of ETHS? It’s not strictly comparable but still).
The UCSD study speaks volumes. It made me reflect on this: When our oldest graduated from ETHS, the superintendent asked every kid with a 4.0 or higher to stand. I swear over 75% of kids stood. Everyone cheered wildly —to be honest, my heart sank. Not even remotely possible. I remember thinking —not only that this was a joke but that, very seriously, it was the kids who weren’t served —and were actually hurt —by shenanigans like this. How are they going to make it in college? I wondered how many ETHS kids never get thru the rigors of university—set up to think they’re ready a when they’re not. (This is not to say that college is for every kid, of course.)
I don’t know how to get after the truth but something definitely stinks. In our backyard. And critically —it’s not doing Evanston kids any favors.
Sadly, the evidence would suggest that those routinely used to un-thinking educational experiences will do just fine: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/us/harvard-students-absenteeism.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/us/university-illinois-students-cheating-ai.html
Hi folks. I'll throw my hat in the ring. I write as an Evanston resident and 30+ year teacher in a local district extremely similar to Evanston.
In my opinion all of these issues currently facing Evanston's schools, from K-12, will not get resolved until the collective citizens of the community come to a specific, definable, and easily understood agreement about what a school's purpose is.
For sake of debate I propose:
Schools should make it unequivocally clear that their foremost (singular) purpose is to provide for and support the exploration and passing along of ACADEMIC(*) knowledge. Additionally, schools should make it clear that the study of knowledge – sharing, exploring, questioning, evaluating, and absorbing it – occurs fundamentally between teacher and student and primarily in the classroom – a school’s “sacred space”. There's no reason that, if shared in a dynamic and open way, knowledge can't be endlessly fascinating and impactful for ALL students regardless of age, background, life plans, or professional aspirations.
(*) It's critical of course that the word "academic" gets defined, otherwise people will quickly diverge in their expectations. So, I'll jump in and say that "academic" means math, science, reading and writing (literature), history (social studies), world languages, art (studio), music and, in Illinois at least, physical education.
None of this is to say that other issues in a child's development - social, moral, emotional and cultural - are not important. They ABSOLUTELY are. However, the insertion of highly complex, sensitive and, invariably political, issues into our schools has crowded out the focus on academics. From my experience and from looking at extensive research on this topic, expecting schools to take on, let alone fix, such a complicated and expanding set of expectations has been largely unsuccessful. Unsuccessful NOT because our administrators, teachers and students haven’t been deeply engaged in their resolution. Instead, it’s because our schools are not experts at nor fundamentally capable of effectively impacting (on a macro and sustained level) the economic, cultural, and, ultimately, familial forces that actually determine one’s foundational development and classroom success. Institutions outside of our schools -governmental, religious, cultural, community, etc. - must take on a greater role and allow schools to do their job (academic learning) at the highest level.
Let's be crystal clear about a school's purpose and uncouple our schools from those issues over which they have little to no reasonable control nor the essential skills or training to address.
Sorry Tom, but I’m failing to see your view that instruction is an afterthought in the Foster School presentation. From my view, there is a guiding philosophy of inquiry-led, whole child, collaborative learning. If this can be implemented with foresight and fidelity, it sounds great to me. I think an obsession with testing and scores and cramming as much content into our kids as possible is how we’ve lost sight of who school is for. Kids need to feel like people at school, not achievement robots. I’ve encountered classrooms where first graders aren’t allowed a midday snack and thought: Why not?! Wouldn’t you rather take 10 mins to help a kid get regulated in this most basic way than push through in favor of more instruction time? Of course any instructional philosophy can be done badly, especially if not equipped with the right resources, but if this is how Foster curriculum is being conceptualized, it looks like a good start to me. (What do I know about kids though, as a mom of two, therapist and social worker who’s studied child development (second career, after a decade in finance/marketing, so I can also do math and know it’s important)? Yes, D65 does need to re-examine how we see students and I think this is an encouraging start.
Sadly, it's not just math. For several years, I taught grammar & writing at an I-won't-name-it college in Chicago to first- and second-year students. Before I started this, it had never occurred to me that I'd have to explain the difference between nouns and verbs – but yes, I did. These folks were getting passed along from year to year in their elementary and high school years without learning basic English. I used fourth- and fifth-grade grammar books for some of my exercises.
As sad as this report is, there's no need to panic. Time to roll up sleeves and follow what works. A simple formula of holding everyone accountable-school and home- will improve student learning. We should be using ungraded primaries; when students have the skills for 4th grade, that's when they move. If students don't behave in school, parents sit with her/him in class. And content matters. No purchased canned programs. Teachers should be capable of creating lessons based on standards and student need. The focus should be on work. Conferences should center on student work. Parents need to do their part by limiting all devices and spend time at home on reading, discussion, finishing assignments.
Also time for parents to realize they shouldn't rely on grades to understand learning. I agree with Truth Seeker here. Having 75% of students receive 4.0 is meaningless. Time for serious teaching!
Given the focus of this post on other school systems, and that you note you are preparing a post on the neighborhood-schools group proposal - providing information on another school system because it is footnoted as an example of committing to neighborhood learning centers in that IINS proposal - Akron (source links below).
Back in 2002, Akron undertook a massive initiative to update its at-the-time 58 public schools, totaling $800 million. Akron is not equivalent to Evanston demographically; it has a much lower MHI (absolute and relative to the state MHI) and much higher poverty rate, along with more than double the overall population. Likely as a result, the State of Ohio appears to have taken on a significant portion of the cost of this overall - roughly 60% - and if I'm reading the agreement correctly, has an ownership stake in both the remaining school buildings and the land.
Moreover, the local cost-share of $365 million was/is funded by a 0.25% local income tax increase, agreed upon by referendum.
And as part of this undertaking, Akron closed over a quarter of its existing school buildings while constructing new schools, largely driven by long-term census losses, according to one news article ending up at a total of 42 schools. By my calcs, that's roughly a proportionate % decrease in buildings to % decrease in overall census. The State appears to have had a bar of 350 students for receiving state funding to support a given school's updates; some of the closed Akron schools had under 200 students. It also appears that the school system may have been running out of money to complete the Master Plan prior to the pandemic - citing escalating construction costs even then. And bigger picture, the demographic make-up of Akron has been shifting over time since 2000; I'll let others look into and sit with how.
https://signalakron.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Cooperative-Agreement-Between-APS-and-Akron-City-5.pdf. https://www.ceacisp.org/news/akron-public-schools-exploring-funds-waiting-building-projects.
I do not provide this picture because I enjoy breaking down these numbers and refuting examples. I am deeply distressed by the state of Evanston's schools - and community bigger picture, including massive hurdles to affordable housing at the base of our schools. But as someone who has worked in matters of complex public policy for over 20 years, I think we need to acknowledge head-on the very stark reality and challenges that we and others are facing, and not avoid discussing when other systems have made hard decisions. Thankfully this info on Akron was pretty easy to find via a few quick Google searches, so the information is there if we want to seek it. Hope providing this picture is helpful, if not easy to sit with.
Weighing in again after my brother - a 20-year public high school math teacher in Massachusetts - shared this article about what screens are doing to education, saying that screen use in education is one of the major reasons he left his career recently. It's not just time spent on "academics," it's spending it off of screens in the classroom. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/opinion/laptop-classroom-test-scores.html
The only educational blueprint that I have found that has proven and consistent success at improving the educational outcomes for all students, including recent immigrants for whom English is a second language, students from varied racial backgrounds and low income backgrounds is the Micaela School in London. It was profiled by the left leaning German Newspaper Die Zeit….https://youtu.be/h9SdG0BkpLg?si=H7ULlO6KKr4vAyxM
how in the world are national issues ok to talk about suddenly, but when it was related to all the issues that lead to these results, this site censored everyone that even remotely brought anything up related to it. sad
I changed the policy after the election in 2024. I barely censored anyone on this subject anyway, I wrote entire stories about corruption and decline!
I can’t stand SEL, it takes up valuable time that could be spent on core subjects such as science or more in-depth math work. After all, learning time is really only maybe four hours a day after you take out recess, gym, and lunch. But this reminds me of a podcast series I’m finally listening to “Sold a Story” about how liberals backed the whole word approach for learning how to read despite tons of evidence coming out that teaching phonics was a superior method. Millions of kids were cheated out of learning to read the better way.
I have nothing against SEL and I respect that there are some kids who need more emotional support than others, especially at the K-3 levels. I just think we need to find a way to augment the instruction if we're devoting a lot of time to SEL. My kid has gym class every day in D65 - I had it 2x a week when I was a kid and the parochial schools here also do it 2x a week. That's a lot of instructional time that is lost and then .. unsurprisingly, it shows up in the test scores.