Nearly All La Grange Teachers Rate High: State

LA GRANGE, IL – Nearly all teachers in La Grange area school districts received top ratings last school year, according to the Illinois Report Card website.

La Grange School District 102 placed all 235 of its teachers in the "excellent" or "proficient" categories as a result of evaluations. The other categories are "needing improvement" and "unsatisfactory."

In the two previous years, the district provided no data to the state. In 2018 and 2020, all teachers received the top ratings, as did 99.2 percent in 2019.

In La Grange School District 102, 98.2 of its 127 teachers made the top categories last year, compared with 100 percent from 2020 to 2022. And in La Grange School District 106, 98 percent of its 77 teachers received top ratings last year. In 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022, all La Grange Highlands teachers were placed in the top categories.

Last school year, all 255 Lyons Township High School teachers made the top categories. The same happened from 2020 to 2022. From 2017 to 2019, the number ranged from 98 percent to 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."