1

Best High Schools in Illinois?!

On April 18, 2023, WGN News in Chicago reported on the 30 best high schools in Illinois, so the Good Soil Good Seed Foundation (GS2) looked into how Illinois students scored on standardized tests. We specifically wanted to know how many students were at grade-level proficiency in two core subject areas — reading and math.

The results may be surprising to some, but not to us. The State of Illinois has grade-level proficiency scores of 30 percent in English Language Arts (includes reading) and 26 percent in math, according to the Illinois Report Card for 2022. Simply put, Illinois Public Schools are failing, and failing infamously.

Between 70-75 percent of students in our public schools are not at grade level in reading and math, yet 87 percent of the students graduate! This reality of poor performance is not new in Illinois. Despite a dramatic increase in spending per student, academic performance has not improved in any meaningful way. According to Wirepoints, spending per pupil in 2019 was $16,227 versus $9,555 in 2007, a 70 percent increase. Proficiency scores have dropped during the same timeframe according to The Nation’s Report Card.

Certainly the 30 best high schools in Illinois (their list is just Chicagoland schools) would all be well above a score of F. See the results below:

Over 50 percent of the “best high schools” (17 of 30) received failing grade-level proficiency scores; 4 schools scored a D; 2 scored a C; 4 scored an A; and 3 did not publish and results.

Congratulations to the 4 outstanding academic schools in this grouping. What are those schools doing that all the others are not? Could it be that their focus is on learning and not on indoctrination into woke ideologies? Could it be that there is a focus on student outcomes and performance metrics that tell the true story of academic success in these schools?

Parents are instructed by God’s Word to raise their children to love and serve the Lord and to love others. The public education system in Illinois, and in America, is not focused on academic outcomes but on indoctrination into ungodly woke-ism.

At Good Soil Good Seed Foundation, we desire to get Illinois children out of academically failing, indoctrination-succeeding public schools and into an academically rich, biblically based education system right now! The Good Soil Good Seed Foundation provides scholarships for children to attend biblically based schools and grants to help organizations start authentic Christian schools.

Please consider donating to this vital mission today. This is America’s mission field. What we do today in our children’s education will literally determine what our country is like tomorrow. We are a registered 501(c)(3) organization, and all donations are tax deductible.

Prayerful consider a donation to GS2 today and thank you for your help.





At Dozens of Illinois Schools, Not ONE Proficient Student

Dozens of government schools across Illinois have been unable to produce even one single student proficient in reading or math, according to new date from the Illinois State Board of Education. In hundreds of schools across the state, just 10 percent of children are proficient in the basics. And it is getting worse.

The new state data show that less than 30 percent of students in the public “education” system achieved even basic proficiency in reading, down from a measly 37 percent in 2019. Just one fourth of children tested proficient in math, down from already unfathomably poor 32 percent just a few years earlier.

This total failure to educate children on even the most basic elements of learning comes despite massive spending levels dwarfing the cost of government “education” in most other states and countries. Even as spending ballooned, academic results declined, the state board of education’s “Report Card” for 2022 revealed.

Perhaps even more astoundingly, some of the schools that failed to produce even one proficient student in either English or math were rated as “commendable” by the Illinois education bureaucracy — the second-highest ranking possible. How the schools scored so well when the students failed so miserably was not immediately clear.

Even many of the children labeled “proficient” are barely literate at best. But while the students may not be able to read or do math properly, and they almost certainly fail just as bad in science and history, they are almost all very well versed in gender theory, climate-change alarmism, race hysteria, and more. LGBT indoctrination is mandated by law across the state, too.

Breaking down the specifics of the educational disaster, there are 30 schools across Illinois — more than two thirds of them in Chicago — where not a single student ranked even “proficient” in reading. Meanwhile, more than 50 schools across the state failed to produce one single student rated proficient in mathematics. Almost two dozen schools failed to get even one child proficient in either subject.

Critics were aghast. “The absolute failure to teach even a single child to read and do math in so many schools is yet another indictment of the state’s educational system,” explained education analysts Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner at Wirepoints.org in a commentary on the educational catastrophe sweeping Illinois.

Citing the same state data, Dabrowski and Klingner also noted that almost 20 percent of government schools in Illinois — more than 600 in total — were only able to get one in ten victims to basic reading proficiency. Over 25 percent of the schools — almost 1,000 in all — were only able to get one in ten proficient in math. And yet, they continually demand more money.

This is evidence of collective insanity, Dabrowski and Klingner concluded in their widely cited analysis of the state data. “In a sane world, schools that don’t and can’t teach a single student the most basic of skills would be shut down,” they explained. “But here, they carry on…the system thrives while students wither.”

In fact, in any other industry, not only would the entity or entities in question be shut down, the scam artists defrauding and bilking customers out of billions of dollars so flagrantly would be prosecuted for fraud and then thrown in jail. It happens all the time in other sectors of the economy not controlled by government.

Imagine, for example, a fast-food restaurant where only a handful of those who ordered a meal actually got anything remotely resembling food, while most customers were handed toxic waste or a rat carcass on a moldy bun. State police SWAT teams would be kicking in the doors by the next morning, if not before. Politicians would be tripping over themselves to condemn the horror.

And yet, what is happening with government schools is orders of magnitude worse than a mere rip-off fast-food operation peddling inedible meals. In the case of schools, the minds, hearts, and souls of innocent children are being poisoned and irreparably damaged. Meanwhile, families, churches and civilization are crumbling as a result. This is an intergenerational crime of monumental proportions.

Of course, Illinois is hardly alone when it comes to the widespread dumbing-down of children in government schools. Results from across America — even in red states — are atrocious. On average, less than one in three victims of government schools are proficient in any core subject, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (also known as The Nation’s Report Card).

But Illinois spends more, and gets even worse results, than almost all other states. This is a state and national crisis. Children are in grave danger. And as President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellent in Education warned in 1983, this so-called “education” is now literally an existential threat to America’s very survival as a nation.

Parents must understand clearly that choosing to send their children to a government indoctrination center posing as a “public school” is practically guaranteeing that they will fail to learn even the most basic subjects, to say nothing of basic morality. Not only will that make it tough to have a real job and support it family, it means those children will be easy to manipulate, deceive — and ultimately, enslave.

Fortunately, for those parents who refuse to accept such a bleak future for their children, there has never been a better time to get them out of the system. Homeschooling has never been easier. Excellent Christian schools are proliferating in churches across Illinois and beyond, thanks in part to the efforts of the Illinois Family Institute.

Millions of families have already fled the government “education” system in recent years. As the latest academic results show, it’s time for many more to join them.