Definitely a shocking and not great statistic. But context can make it a less exciting story.
The report comes from Wirepoints
https://wirepoints.org/2024-educati...schools-for-reading-its-24-schools-wirepoints , where they report that 80 Illinois public schools hold zero students proficient in math, and 24 schools where zero students are proficient in reading.
Starting off, Illinois has 3,977 public schools
https://ballotpedia.org/Public_education_in_Illinois . So this is an issue for about 2% of total schools in Illinois. Next are the actual schools listed, of which 17.5% of the 80 math deficient schools and 1/3rd of the reading deficient schools are a part of the Youth Connection Charter School network, or YCCS. These are your dropout / pregnant / last chance schools.
Next, what are they not proficient at? They are using the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR), which is often touted as the most difficult testing scrutiny in the country. They've adjusted it now, as using something like the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) largely showed their students performed similarly at the national level.
Thus, to summarize: Illinois was previously using an needlessly high benchmark to gauge readiness, which was then being used dishonestly in a report to show that their schools for misfits and low-income city schooling are more shit than they actually are.
Also the entire report was largely made as a tool to galvanize people against current public education and instead push them to vote for Universal School Choice (USC). Regardless of how you feel about USC, I think it largely demotes the report from investigative journalism into more of a political ad for USC.
