This Elmhurst School Number A Stark Reminder

ELMHURST, IL – A recent student performance measure at Sandburg Middle School may never make a news release or school board presentation.

Yet it is a stark reminder of a trend in Elmhurst and just about everywhere else in the country: Low-income students are far behind many of their peers.

Last year, not a single low-income eighth-grader at Sandburg met state standards in math on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, according to the Illinois Report Card.

It's hard to quickly get the exact number of low-income eighth-graders at Sandburg. But based on low-income percentages, the number is about two dozen.

At Bryan and Churchville middle schools, the percentages of low-income eighth-graders meeting math standards last year were 5.9 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively.

Overall at Sandburg, 45 percent of eighth-graders met standards in math last year.

At Tuesday's school board meeting, resident Tom Chavez, a conservative critic of the board, noted the low-income number at Sandburg. The Illinois Report Card includes such statistics.

Later in the meeting, the school board was given a presentation on various test scores and how they compare with national numbers.

As always, Elmhurst scored far better than national averages, as is typically the case for wealthy school districts.

In Elmhurst, the median household income is $143,000, nearly double the national average.

A couple of years ago, board member Jim Collins said many residents don't want to compare Elmhurst to national averages.

"I think a lot of people bristle when we talk about how we're above the national average because I think our community's expectations are far higher than that," he said at a board meeting.

In its presentations, the district used to compare its numbers to schools with similar demographics, but that practice has largely fallen to the wayside – at least publicly.

At Tuesday's meeting, board President Athena Arvanitis wanted to clarify that students across all grades in District 205 performed as well as or better than 76 percent of their grade-level peers nationally.

In response, district official Jacob Wertz said, "Yep."

"Wow!" Arvanitis said.