Finally Revealed: 1st Western Springs Teacher Ratings This Decade

WESTERN SPRINGS, IL – For the first time this decade, Western Springs School District 101 released teacher evaluation data, according to the Illinois Report Card website.

Last school year, the district rated all of its 125 teachers in the top categories of "excellent" and "proficient." The other categories are "needing improvement" and "unsatisfactory."

District 101 provided no teacher evaluation data to the state from 2020 to 2022. In 2018 and 2019, all teachers received the top ratings.

Last school year, Lyons Township High School placed all 255 of its teachers in the top two categories. It did the same from 2020 to 2022. From 2017 to 2019, the number ranged from 98 percent to 99 percent.

Statewide, 97 percent of teachers were in the top two categories last school year.

Many districts have placed all of their teachers in the top ratings. In 2021, Chicago Public Schools did so for all of its nearly 22,000 teachers.

In 2010, the state enacted a law requiring schools to have performance evaluation systems. Teachers without tenure must be evaluated every year. Tenured teachers must go through the same process every two years, unless they are in the bottom two categories.

Last year, Wirepoints' Ted Dabrowski questioned the state's rating system.

"It’s important to note that the inflated teacher evaluation problem is not limited to the Chicago Public Schools," he said. "It’s rampant everywhere. Across the entire state, 98.8 percent of all teachers in 2021 were evaluated as proficient or excellent. Try and square that up with the fact that in 2021, less than one-third of the state’s 1.9 million students could read or do English at grade level."