To read Peoria’s “newspaper of record,” one would think that everything is positive at Peoria Public Schools. They “got better marks on the Illinois State Board of Education’s annual Illinois Report Card this year.” “Nine schools received improved designations.” Two schools “were deemed exemplary schools.” The superintendent “celebrated the improvements in a statement issued by the district.” Hurrah!

Except.

Maybe it would be nice if journalists didn’t just reprint statements issued by the school district and actually did their own independent investigation. This is something that used to be standard practice in journalism. Journalists used to question everything. They weren’t just scribes for government agencies who take our tax money.

Let’s look at just one of the laudatory examples given in the Journal Star article:

Three schools located in the poorest areas of the city – Franklin Primary School, Harold B. Dawson Jr. Middle School, and Manual High School – were elevated from the lowest designation to “commendable,” meaning they had no underperforming student groups, a graduation rate greater than 67%, and were not in the top 10% of schools statewide.

Sounds great. Let’s look at Franklin Primary School’s report card on the Illinois Report Card website. Would you like to take a guess as to what percentage of the students are proficient in English Language Arts (ELA)? Six percent. That means 94% of the students at this school that “had no underperforming student groups” are not proficient in English. You might think it couldn’t get worse, but the percentage of students proficient in math is only two percent. That’s right: 98% of the students at this “commendable” K-4 school are not proficient in math. But they have a graduation rate greater than 67%.

Does something seem like it’s not right to you? Something that maybe would warrant a question or two from the fourth estate to the school board members? Maybe raise some concerns over how $14,000 per student at this school is being spent and why there is so little return on investment?

Not surprisingly, Harold B. Dawson Middle School (formerly Calvin Coolidge Middle School) turned in a proficiency rate of 3% in ELA and 2% in Math. They boast 11% proficiency in science. Booyah. They, too, are “commendable,” according to the State of Illinois. By the time you reach Manual High School, proficiency in ELA and Math are at 1%, and science is at 2%.

Can we state the obvious here? These scores are abysmal. They are not commendable. They are not a cause to celebrate. Our tax money is being wasted. Our city’s children are not being educated. Why isn’t there an independent investigation into why the performance of these schools is so appalling? Why aren’t the school board members (who seem to think that the most important work to be done is renaming our school buildings) being tossed out?

Here’s another question that has not come up during the teachers union negotiations: Why should the teachers get any more money? Why should there be no connection between their pay and the students’ educational outcomes? If your job is to educate, and only 1% of your students are educated, did you do your job? If the retort is that the teachers don’t get enough support from the administration for student discipline, then why don’t they threaten to strike over that issue? Why do they only threaten to strike over salary concerns?

One thing is for sure: the public school system is broken. Really, horribly, badly broken. And Peoria is fiddling while the schools burn.