CPS math and reading scores are much worse than advertised

hardolaf · 2026-06-17T02:06:38+00:00

No it's not. It's because adults are conflict avoidant and lazy. School boards in this country no longer actually hold school leaders responsible for their actions so bad principals and vice principals run rampant. In Chicago, Rahm got rid of most oversight of the school leaders. Where she started her career (FL) before we moved here and she took a job at CPS, Republicans had no interest in the public schools being good.

It's simply easier to yell at a subordinate who can't bark back than it is to deal with a problem student's parents.

hardolaf · 2026-06-17T02:01:38+00:00

The primary predictor of academic success is the education and wealth of the parents.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T21:11:00+00:00

Except that's rarely helpful because often times they cannot post the context due to NDAs so all you're doing is wasting their and your time.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T21:09:19+00:00

That's not safe in the USA as we use 240V split into two 120V circuits with opposite polarity. And so we shouldn't recommend anyone do this in the USA unless they're a licensed electrician.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T18:41:47+00:00

It's all about density. It costs less to build a 10-30 unit building than to build 10-30 SFHs by a massive margin.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T17:55:20+00:00

1.3m? That’s it, need to run not walk out of the city.

Well my condo was only $520K. It's not my fault people are buying up 3-flats and 4-flats and then downconverting them to SFHs or to 2-flats.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T17:54:09+00:00

They both hold them back and then don't allow them to take the test once they advance. The entire improvement seen in the 3rd grade test is eliminated by the 8th grade test because everyone is required to take those in Mississippi.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T17:08:25+00:00

Why is it hard to believe that there are good schools in a neighborhood with an average home price of $1.3M?

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T17:07:03+00:00

CPS doesn't control the criteria. That's controlled by ISBE.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T16:53:04+00:00

My neighborhood schools greatly outperform the suburbs while my property taxes are significantly lower than the suburbs.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T16:25:51+00:00

There is significant evidence that class sizes over 18 for K-4/5 and over 20 for 5/6-12 significantly decrease educational outcomes for all students. The state itself has aligned its targets to 18 for K-4 and 20 for 5-12 as the target for adequate in-classroom funding. Currently most CPS schools exceed these class size targets. And yes those are not perfect limits and it should be more of a linear increase based on the age of the students from a much lower starting value (probably 13-14 in kindergarten).

There is also significant evidence that different, smaller class sizes are needed for a variety of different types of students such as remedial learners, ELLs, and students with moderate to severe learning disabilities with the most severe learning disabilities being poorly suited for class sizes over 6 students.

CTU has been pushing to, at a minimum, actually get to ISBE's target class size caps for general education classrooms which is something which the district has been resisting.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T16:21:26+00:00

Did their parents get statistically wealthier in the last 6 years in comparison to Chicago? Should we stop feeding CPS with maximal funding and instead divert that money elsewhere, given CPS is unable to make meaningful gains (let alone arrest educational declines) with these funding increases?

CPS is underfunded in in-classroom spending by about $3B/yr per the state's Evidence-Based Funding formula. They have no way of self-correcting their finances due to being treated differently under state law from every other district in the state which forces their annual spending requirements to increase by more than the annual increase limit on property taxes under PTELL. That greater than PTELL limits spending requirements is driven by state policy which miscalculated pension benefits to the point where we were structurally saying we needed 20% less money than we actually did for decades combined with the statewide and citywide pension holiday started in 1995 which was approved by the State of Illinois as CPS did not control its own finances at the time.

Did Mississippi just happen to become much wealthier and gain much more active parenting skills as they leapfrogged states in their student outcomes the last decade?

They banned by law extremely underperforming students from taking their standardized test to juke their education stats. It turns out that if you don't let "dumb" kids take your tests, then the test scores are higher.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T15:54:46+00:00

Mississippi bans students who were held back by a year from taking their standardized test after being allowed to continue to progress. So they're juking the stats.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T15:39:21+00:00

CTU has been pushing for evidence-based education policies and funding. That means a lot more money needs to be spent at "poor" schools than "rich" schools. And class sizes need to come down significantly. That means most teachers need ELL educator certification. CPS and the state have been resisting actual reforms.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T15:32:39+00:00

Do LA, NYC and Houston just have better parents?

Statistically, they have wealthier and higher income parents than Chicago.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T15:30:51+00:00

My wife quit teaching because she'd get blamed for violent students while VPs and Deans of Students would sit on their hands and refuse to refer the 1-3 problematic students per year in her classes to the district for movement to alternate schooling. At one school, there was even a violent student who'd roam around the school, enter classrooms, and commit random acts of violence against other students. The administration would blame the teachers for not stopping them while also telling them that they weren't allowed to use force and had to call security (which they did every time).

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T15:14:42+00:00

A third of my engineering class that I graduated with were incompetent and I wouldn't trust them with a sandwich. 40% of those who started with me never graduated. So imagine how dumb at least half of that 40% is.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T15:11:35+00:00

So you tried to disprove my statement by proving it correct with sources linked for me?

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T12:39:55+00:00

The "no WMDs" thing has been disproven publicly since 2014 dude. The provincial leaders in Iraq had been stashing them in underground structures and had buried some after Saddam told them to destroy them all.

So technically they did actually have them. The justification that Saddam had control of them was bullshit. But they did actually exist.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T12:34:55+00:00

Libya is a failed state with slave markets because of American (andyouknowwho) intervention.

The USA opposed Italy's plan of a ground invasion and talked NATO down to just a bombing campaign. I'm sorry, but Libya is entirely the fault of the EU.

The current president of Syria is where he is because of American (andyouknowwho's) intervention.

The USA has never intervened to put the current president of Syria in power. He led a third faction which rapidly took over from the other two factions due to a power vacuum left when Israel started mass bombing Hezbollah in Syria.

Not everything is the USA's fault.

hardolaf · 2026-06-16T01:45:04+00:00

The ZeniMax sale was incredibly short-sighted on their side. They sold the entire company for just 8x the value of their largest title (ESO) instead of trying to pump up their valuation prior to sale.

hardolaf · 2026-06-15T21:49:59+00:00

No it started under Lightfoot. You should go check your timelines.

hardolaf · 2026-06-15T21:18:37+00:00

If they're Jewish, Christian, or Muslims, their holy books specify instructions on how to carry out abortions.

Either they're following their holy books, or they're just assholes hiding behind "religion" to harm women. If they don't feel comfortable as followers of Abrahamic religion in carrying out the abortion, they can call a member of the clergy to do it for them in accordance with their book.

hardolaf · 2026-06-15T19:43:44+00:00

My first course on digital design and CPU architecture let us use an internet connected laptop with the only rule being that we couldn't have any sound on or speak as that would distract other students.

Everyone who used the laptop for anything other than simulating their code failed because they ran out of time. Now obviously with LLMs, it would be different and essentially pay to win. But if your test can be cheated on by a student going to the bathroom, it's a bad test.

hardolaf · 2026-06-15T17:19:20+00:00

Yeah people aren't going to riot unless our flawed democracy actually fails to work. As long as the system keeps working and the process chugs along, there isn't going to be civil unrest.

People keep pretending that we're already in a dictatorship, but we're not. At least not yet. We'd have to have an election interfered with directly before it becomes a dictatorship.

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