Nearly All Darien Teachers Get Top Ratings

DARIEN, IL – An overwhelming majority of teachers in Darien's school districts received the top ratings last year, according to state data.

One district's numbers have been unavailable on the Illinois Report Card website for the last four years.

Last school year, the biggest of the local districts, Darien District 61, placed 99 percent of its 111 teachers in the "excellent" or "proficient" categories as a result of evaluations. The other ratings are "needing improvement" and "unsatisfactory."

In 2019 and 2021, 100 percent of District 61's teachers fell into the top categories. In 2018, 2020 and 2022, the numbers ranged from 97 to 99 percent.

For Cass District 63, all of its 60 teachers rated "excellent" or "proficient" from 2018 to 2023, except 2020, when the number was 97 percent.

The state has no data listed for Center Cass District 66 since 2019, when 100 percent of teachers received the top ratings.

In response to a Patch inquiry, Center Cass Superintendent Andrew Wise said the district has a phone call into the state about the data, which he said the district has.

In Hinsdale High School District 86, 100 percent of its nearly 300 teachers got the top ratings every year since 2018, except in 2022, when it was 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."