Kankakee Times

Illinois State House District 79 candidate Jackie Haas said: "According to the Illinois State Board of Education's 2023 report card for Illinois schools, only 35% of Illinois students read at grade level and just 37% are proficient in math." Haas, who is running for re-election, made the statement on Facebook on June 9.

"According to the Illinois State Board of Education's 2023 report card for Illinois schools, only 35% of Illinois students read at grade level and just 27% are proficient in math," said Haas, according to Facebook.

In her Facebook post, Haas shared a link to a commentary piece in the Journal Courier. In that piece, Mark Glennon, founder of Wirepoints, pointed out that in 67 schools in the state, there were no students proficient in math and 32 schools where there were no students proficient in reading. Despite this, nearly 70% of students from those schools graduated. Glennon said he took the numbers from the Illinois State Board of Education’s (ISBE) 2023 Illinois School Report Card.

Screenshot of State Rep. Jackie Haas' June 9 Facebook post | State Representative Jackie Haas Facebook page

Glennon also noted that some of those 67 schools cater to at-risk youths and students who drop out of school, which presents unique challenges for those institutions.

In comparison, he said that before the COVID-19 pandemic affected schools and children, there were 21 schools where students couldn’t read and 37 schools where none of their students could do math. "We can do better with a system in Illinois that spends $24,000 per child. It’s not only our students who are failing. We are," said Glennon in his commentary piece.

According to a May 21 article from Wirepoints by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner, "most parents just don’t know how badly Illinois schools fail their children." The organization launched its own school report cards system with the 2023 ISBE data and noted that statistics they show in their report cards "clash with the education system’s ‘accountability statistics.’" Yet, they say parents are told "70% of Illinois schools are ‘exemplary’ or ‘commendable.’"

Rep. Jackie Haas was elected to represent the people of Illinois’ 79th House District in December 2020. She is CEO of the Helen Wheeler Center for Community Health; she was a social worker at Riverside Medical Center and has a Bachelor of Social Work from Valparaiso University and a Master of Social Work from the University of Illinois-Chicago, according to her biography from the Illinois General Assembly.