IL Dem Sen.: We Have Awful Proficiency Numbers Because We Could Have Kept Schools open and 'Didn't'

On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Big Money Show,” Illinois State Sen. Willie Preston (D) reacted to a report that 55 Chicago public schools have no students who are proficient in math and reading by stating that “we should have kept the schools open at any rate possible safely, and we didn’t do that. And what we’re seeing now are the results of that, kids being out of the classroom and on e-learning.”

Preston stated, “I think it’s important for us to get all of the facts. So, one thing that we need to recognize here is that there are 22 schools that have children not proficient in reading and 33 in math. I want to distinguish the two. I can tell you this is a direct byproduct of what we call COVID learning loss, and COVID learning loss is what you should hear much more. And it’s a term coined by Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-IL). I will say this, I always agreed with Mayor Lightfoot’s position that we should have kept the schools open at any rate possible safely, and we didn’t do that. And what we’re seeing now are the results of that, kids being out of the classroom and on e-learning.”

He added, “[W]e should never do what we did before, which is keep kids out of the classrooms for years.”

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