Illinois Families for Public Schools, along with the Computer Science Teachers Association - Chicago Chapter, CS4IL, Chicago Teachers Union, and the editorial boards of two student newspapers, the Lane Tech Champion and the Jones Blueprint, sent the Chicago Board of Education and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez a letter today calling on Chicago Public Schools to revise their policy for the Student Online Personal Protection Act and join a statewide consortium in order to make educational software in use around the state available to CPS students. The letter states: "Providing access to technology and protecting student data are not inherently in opposition, and we firmly believe that school districts can do both well." Full letter text below.

As many districts around the state have had to take an adaptive pause after or for the first week back at school post-winter break, we are seeing lots of confusion from parents about whether ISBE needs to approve this or not, and whether districts can make this decision on their own. Some parents have told us their district has said it’s up to ISBE, which is not accurate. And Chicago Public Schools continues to tell parents the district is not currently authorized by law to do districtwide remote learning.

As we deal with the omicron surge, we are seeing wide variations in the covid testing procedures happening at schools around the state. IDPH began funding the University of Illinois’s SHIELD saliva testing for some schools last spring and expanded it to all schools in August 2021. Last fall additional capacity was added through a federal program. Chicago Public Schools, however, is using other federal covid relief funds to implement testing separately.

We are hearing from many parents who are grappling with the decision to send their kids back to school, especially at districts that are opening Monday Jan 3rd, including Chicago Public Schools. There is also a lot of confusion about quarantine guidance from the CDC and we wanted to provide some information.

Public comment at December 15, 2021 ISBE meeting from Cassie Creswelll, IL-FPS director

Ahead of Wednesday’s IL State Board of Education meeting, thirty-seven Illinois state legislators are sending a letter Tuesday to the Board asking them for more due diligence before any approval vote on a multi-million dollar new state testing system.

New research shared in Ed Week recently confirms what ed experts have been saying for years, which is that tying teacher and admin evaluations to student test scores is deeply unfair in inequitable school systems, harmful to school culture, and not beneficial to student achievement. Researchers from Brown, Michigan State, University of Connecticut and UNC Chapel Hill analyzed a multitude of data from 2009 to 2018 and found no evidence that this policy had even a small positive effect on student achievement. 

Downers Grove parents and students push back against extremist group trying to ban LGBTQ+ books

We shared with you last week that book banning attempts are on the rise nationally, and right here in Downers Grove a meeting was held Monday where a small group of parents supported by outside agitators showed up to try and have award-winning LGBTQ books banned from the school library. Luckily, the community came out in force to speak out against this attempt at this bigoted attempt at censorship. 

As we’ve shared, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) has been talking about adding an additional state test for months, which would increase state testing to 3x a year and add an optional—but state-funded—component to test students in K-2 even though the feds don’t mandate state testing for students under 3rd grade. We’ve been part of a coalition working with teachers, assessment experts and other orgs to push back against this, as the type of interim test ISBE wants to use has been shown to have harmful effects on teaching and learning, and is not supposed to be used as high-stakes.

IL-FPS has been in the news a lot lately! Check out some of what we’ve been up to below. This coverage is from this past week alone!