Wirepoints

Why can only 6 of every 100 Chicago black students do math at grade level? Chicago Mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson offers some clues. If you’re looking to make sense of why so few Chicago Public School students can read and do math at grade level, you’ll want to listen to Brandon Johnson’s words from a 2018 talk he gave along with author Mark Warren, a former professor at Harvard, and Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Johnson’s views on education matter because he could be the next mayor of Chicago. Equally important is that the Chicago Teachers Union has donated more than$2 millionto his campaign. It’s the CTU’s philosophy, in part inspired by Johnson’s ideology, that for decades has run CPS schools.Today just 1 in 10 black CPS students can read at grade level and only 1 in 20 are proficient in math. #chicago #Chicagomayor #mayor #Brandonjohnson #cps #ctu

@MayorLightfoot is finally out as mayor after four years of running Chicago into the ground. Visit Wirepoints.org/chicago-issues/ to be reminded of everything she did. #covid19 #chicagocrime #mayor #lightfoot #chicago

Ted joined @NewsmaxTV to discuss the state of the Chicago mayoral election. Ted said the race was almost sure to go to a runoff but that the real issue was whether Chicagoans would turn out to show their dissatisfaction over the city leadership’s failure to control crime. #chicago #chicagonews #chicagocrime #crimerate #homicide #crime @jbpritzker @MayorLightfoot

CPS parent on @wvon1690' Perri Small and Wirepoints’ Ted Dabrowski to voice her concern of only 11% of Chicago black students able to read at grade level. In math, it’s just 6%. Article: Trapped in a death spiral: Chicago Public School spending hits record $29K per student as enrollment shrinks, outcomes plummet Link in bio #chicago #chicagonews #chicacopublicschools #schoolchoice #lorilightfoot #jbpritzker #illinois @MayorLightfoot @jbpritzker @ChiPubSchools

These stats focus on schools where zero percent of kids are able to read or do math. But we could have just as easily looked at the 622 Illinois schools where only 1 in 10 kids can read at grade level. That’s a whopping 18 percent of the state’s 3,547 schools that tested students in 2022. And only 1 in 10 kids can do math at grade level in 930 schools…that’s more than a quarter of all schools in the state. Be sure to get all of these facts and more from Wirepoints. Sign up to get our free daily newsletter. And help us keep bringing you the information that the political elite don’t want you to have. Donate $10 today! https://wirepoints.org/donate/ #chicago #baltimoreschools #lorilightfoot #jbpritzker #chicagoschool #schoolchoice #illinois

About three years ago, Pritzker promised a task force that would reform and lower property taxes. And cut Illinois’ 7,000 units of government. The commission was a flop. After blowing past their initial due date, the final draft of the report ended up as a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas and no firm solutions.

@jbpritzker promotes Tony Sanders U46 to #Illinois Superintendent despite abysmal results. Why not someone with an obsession with reading and math results? @wirepoints3937 on with #JeffDaly of #WZUS #Decatur Radio.

Gov. @jbpritzker joined CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to promote #illinois' “achievements,” but his interviewers consistently challenged or rejected his many claims on crime, jobs and the flight of major companies from Illinois. Wirepoints sets the record straight below. Gov. Pritzker said “crime is coming down gradually” in Chicago. Not true. Crime in Chicago was up 41% in 2022. https://wirepoints.org/dont-buy-the-tribune-headline-chicago-crime-worsened-in-2022-wirepoints/ Gov. Pritzker said Illinois was “attracting jobs and businesses to the state.” Not true. Illinois employment has shrunk by 173,000 people since the governor took office in 2019. That’s the 3rd-worst performance by any state in the country. https://wirepoints.org/about-gov-pritzkers-1-trillion-gdp-brag-wirepoints/ Gov. Pritzker said that “one business left” the state – Citadel. Not true. Illinois lost, in 2022 alone, the headquarters of Fortune 500 companies Caterpillar, Boeing and Tyson Foods. https://wirepoints.org/illinois-has-been-bleeding-its-wealthiest-residents-for-years-now-its-ken-griffins-turn-to-leave-wirepoints #worldeconomicforum #davos #pritzker #election2024 #desantis #factcheckers #jobs #Chicago #crime @citadelsecurities @Boeing @tysonfoods @MayorLightfoot @CNBCtelevision

New 2022 state population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show #Illinois is once again one of the nation’s biggest losers. Illinois’ population shrank by more than 104,000 between 2021 and 2022, the third-worst decline in the nation behind only New York and California. That’s similar to last year, when Illinois lost an adjusted 100,000 in population. In contrast with Illinois’ struggle to keep its residents and attract more in-migration, all of Illinois’ neighboring states except #Michigan managed to grow their populations. Michigan, like Illinois, shrank in 2022, but its losses were comparatively far smaller, just 0.03% of its population. Illinois was also one of the nation’s biggest losers on a percentage basis. The state lost 0.82% of its 2021 population, the 2nd-most in the nation behind only New York. Louisiana was close behind with a loss of 0.8%. The #Census data confirms what other population information, including the migration data from the IRS, shows: Illinois’ failed public policies continue to chase residents out of the state. Find more information and analysis at https://wirepoints.org/new-2022-census-data-illinois-population-down-another-104000-nations-3rd-worst-drop-wirepoints/ Illinois’ change in population comes from three major sources: the state’s net natural increase, its international migration and its domestic migration. Combine all three components and you get Illinois’ net population loss of 104,437 in 2022. The governor’s continued failure to address the state’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes, its worst-in-nation pension crisis, its growing crime, the state’s broken finances, its outlier jobs climate and more – not to mention his draconian #Covid policies of the last two years – continues to drive more residents out of the state. #saveIllinois #movingout #leavingillinois #populationloss #shorts #chicago

In the discussions of Amendment 1, there is a crucial point that proponents want Illinoisans to ignore: that the new rights in the amendment will only apply to government workers. Watch Wirepoints on Flannery Fired Up: https://www.fox32chicago.com/video/1136529 Learn more about Amendment 1: https://wirepoints.org/amendment1/

Putting workers rights into the Illinois State Constitution. A great idea, or the dumbest thing ever? Wirepoints' Ted Dabrowski lays out the facts: “If you want to see property taxes go up, if you want to see parents’ rights diminished, then this is the amendment for you.” Watch the full debate on Flannery Fired Up: https://www.fox32chicago.com/video/1136529 Learn more about Amendment 1: https://wirepoints.org/amendment1/

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski joined Tom Miller on the WJPF Morning Newswatch to discuss multiple topics: - Illinois' unemployment rate being the worst in the country - The abysmal educational outcomes before and after COVID - Why a state credit upgrade is meaningless - The perils of the SAFE-T Act

Ted Dabrowski joined Perri Small on WVON to talk about Amendment 1. Perri was in favor of the Amendment, but after hearing both sides of the argument from Ted and others, she changed to a “No.” Listen to find out why.

If you care about property taxes, parents’ rights or union powers, you should care about Amendment 1, the referendum on Illinois’ November 2022 ballot. It’s the most important vote Illinoisans will take this election, and perhaps the most important in decades. If Amendment 1 passes, Illinois’ government unions will be granted new and expansive powers in the Illinois Constitution. It would create a new right for workers to collectively bargain – on par with freedom of religion and freedom of speech – that can’t be negated or diminished. Every Illinoisan will be impacted, so every Illinoisan deserves to know the facts. Visit Wirepoints.org/amendment1 to learn more.

Read the full article at: https://wirepoints.org/illinoisans-would-pay-40-less-in-property-taxes-if-the-state-spent-at-levels-where-students-perform-better-florida-wirepoints/ Ted Dabrowski joined Jeanne Ives of Breakthrough Ideas to talk about crime, Governor Pritzker’s five phases of restoring Illinois, Illinois’ fiscal problems, how much residents will have to pay to repay the federal government’s loans, and how Illinois’ education system is failing. To learn more about Illinois’ education system: https://wirepoints.org/poor-student-achievement-and-near-zero-accountability-an-indictment-of-illinois-public-education-system-wirepoints-special-report/ #shorts #illinois #pritzker #lorilightfoot #florida #education #educationreform #schoolchoice

Read the full article at: https://wirepoints.org/chicago-carjackings-on-pace-for-a-21-year-high-and-theyre-getting-more-and-more-weaponized-wirepoints/ Chicago’s growing #carjacking problem is a microcosm of what’s gone wrong in the city. Carjackings are more frequent, they are more weaponized, and there are fewer consequences than at almost any time in recent history. A #Wirepoints analysis of city data shows that if 2022 year-to-date trends continue, #Chicago carjackings will reach a new high this year, at least since 2001. It’s clear: the City of Chicago’s political leadership does not have the will, the capability, or the competence to tamp down on this insidious crime. Without a major course correction, it spells even deeper trouble for the city. At its current run-rate, Chicago will hit 1,960 carjackings in 2022 – the highest since at least 2001.* That’s up from a previous high of 1,848 carjackings in 2021 and more than triple the pre-Covid, pre-George Floyd 2019 baseline of 603 carjackings. It’s not only that we’re on pace for a new record. Some 76 percent of Chicago carjackings this year so far have been classified as “aggravated,” another record. Aggravated usually indicates the use of a #weapon during a hijacking. And while carjacking #arrest rates have averaged 10 percent from 2010 through 2021, so far this year they are at a near-record low of 6 percent. The data on Chicago carjacking through the years, and especially through the first half of 2022, serves as an unfortunate example of what happens when a city becomes “open” for crime, with no real deterrence or consequences in most instances. It all points to the failure of #CookCounty courts and Chicago City Hall to meaningfully curtail violent disorder here. #shorts #shortvideo #illinois #crime #crime_news #chicago #cpd

Read the full article at: https://wirepoints.org/gov-pritzker-is-still-proclaiming-illinois-a-covid-disaster-area-how-does-he-do-it-with-a-straight-face/ #Governor J.B. #Pritzker recently declared #Illinois a Covid disaster area for the 31st consecutive 30-day period. For more than two years, the governor has invoked a “disaster” to rule by executive order. It’s what allowed him to lock down businesses, impose mask mandates, close schools and micromanage healthcare across the state. His most recent emergency declaration of June 24, 2022 continued to use the same language: “I find that a disaster area exists within the State of Illinois and specifically declare all counties in the state of Illinois as a disaster area.” Even if you were sympathetic to Pritzker’s disaster declarations during the height of the pandemic, you’d have to admit his pronouncement is absurd today. Every major metric, from vaccinations to hospitalizations to deaths, tells us that. By the end of June, 78% of adults and nearly 90% of Illinoisans aged 65-plus – the most-vulnerable population to #Covid – were #vaccinated. Just 3% of ICU beds, on average, were filled with Covid patients over the past three months. It’s the same with regular hospital beds. Illinois has averaged eight Covid deaths a day over the last three months, and even then, it’s hard to know whether they died because of Covid or with Covid. 88% of Illinois’ 744 Covid deaths since April 1, 2022 have been over the age of 60 and the average age of those deaths has been about 75, not too distant from Illinois’ average life expectancy of 79. Not a single person under the age of 20 has died in the last 3.5 months. The fact that Pritzker’s disaster proclamation declares all counties a disaster area is also indefensible. Some counties, like tiny Putnam and Edwards, have Covid cases appearing in single digits and haven’t experienced a single Covid death in over three months. Instead, Illinois remains just one of 14 states, and the only one of our neighbors, to “manage” Covid via an emergency order. #cookcounty #lakecounty #chicago #springfield #peoria #rockford #waukegan #naperville #champaign #joliet #reform #follow

In The Dialogue's first video podcast, Mark Glennon sits down with Orland Park mayor and current GOP candidate for Illinois' 6th congressional district Keith Pekau to discuss how he got started in politics, how his policies in Orland Park could translate to the federal level and where he stands on a number of hot button issues this election cycle. See more at https://wirepoints.org/podcasts/

As crime continues to roil economic and social life in post-George Floyd, post-#covid19 #Chicago, getting policing and criminal justice right are crucial. City officials are failing at that task. We’re already seen anemic rates of arrest and prosecutions in Chicago, accompanied by finger-pointing between politicians over crime and the court system. And years of no support from city leadership, anti-policing legislation and the damaging rhetoric of the “defund” movement have taken a toll on Chicago police morale and manpower. All that has spread the #police force so thin that, in #2021, one of law enforcement’s most basic functions, responding to high-priority #emergency service calls in a timely manner, was regularly beyond their capacity. New data uncovered by Wirepoints through public records requests to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) reveal that in 2021 there were 406,829 incidents of high-priority emergency service calls for which there were no police available to respond. That was 52 percent of the 788,000 high-priority 911 service calls dispatched in 2021. Read the full report at: https://wirepoints.org/new-2021-chicago-data-shows-400000-high-priority-incidents-where-dispatchers-had-no-police-available-to-send-wirepoints/ #video #illinois

In #Champaign #Illinois’, only 10% of black 3rd-grade students in the public schools are proficient in reading. Next door in #Urbana it’s even worse for 3rd-graders, where only 6% of blacks and just 4% of Hispanics read at grade level. In Champaign, these trends continue all the way through high school, where only 38% of all Champaign 11th-graders are proficient in English on the SAT. Despite those dismal results, 82% of all students graduate and 99% of districtwide teachers are rated “excellent or proficient.” Similar results are seen statewide. In #Decatur just 2% of black and 16% of white 3rd-graders could read at grade level in 2019. In #Rockford, it was 7% for blacks. And in #Elgin, it was only 11% for Hispanics. Champaign is part of Wirepoint’s statewide #report that indicts Illinois’ #educational system. Our assessment is harsh because student outcomes are beyond dismal and no one, it seems, takes any responsibility for them. Social promotion, hyper-inflated teacher evaluations and misleading “accountability” designations from ISBE all help to deflect blame. The system is perpetuated by a complex weave of labor laws, hundreds of districts, generous salaries, constitutionally-protected pensions, powerful superintendents and even more powerful unions. It’s why the state’s $38 billion education system – propped up by the symbiotic relationship between unions and lawmakers – can only be described as an educational-industrial complex. It’s no wonder 80% of Illinois parents now support #schoolchoice. Read the full report at: https://wirepoints.org/poor-student-achievement-and-near-zero-accountability-an-indictment-of-illinois-public-education-system-wirepoints-special-report/ To get engaged visit: https://wirepoints.org/ #youtube #fyp #educationmatters #chicagoland #chicago #centralillinois #southernillinois #information #research #quincy #chicago #elgin #education #educationmatters #aurora #Peoria #reelsvideo #shortvideo

Mark and Ted discuss how Gov. Pritzker may be on his way to a presidential campaign and what that means for Illinoisans. Plus: more on the possibility of rolling brownouts coming to Illinois this summer. All in Episode 37.

Caterpillar’s move from #Illinois to #Texas encapsulates the lopsided migration relationship between the two states. Illinois, with its fiscal, economic and governance problems, is the big loser to a state with low taxes, fewer regulations and fiscal stability. https://wirepoints.org/caterpillar-executives-to-join-the-nearly-400000-illinoisans-who-have-left-for-texas-since-2000-wirepoints/ Not only does the IRS report that Illinois loses thousands of taxpayers and their dependents to Texas every year, but the Illinoisans who move there are far wealthier than the Texans who move into Illinois. Since 2000, more than 395,000 Illinoisans have made the move to Texas, but only about 236,000 Texans have made the reverse journey, according to the IRS’ annual migration data. That’s left Illinois with a net loss to the Lone Star State over the last two decades of nearly 160,000 residents – equal to about the population of Naperville. Overall, Illinois has lost a net 1.37 million people (tax filers and their dependents) to other states since 2000. Only New York and Alaska have lost more people than Illinois when measured on a percent of population basis. The tax filers who left Illinois for Texas in the latest year reported by the IRS had, on average, adjusted gross incomes of more than $106,000. In contrast, the Texans who moved into Illinois earned on average just $71,000. That’s a record gap of $35,000 in 2020. Count on the CAT personnel who do move to Texas to make that income gap even bigger. The top five CAT executives alone took in $16 million in salaries and $55 million in total compensation last year, according to Salary.com. The loss of Caterpillar is yet another sign that the state’s taxpayer subsidies and a devotion to “woke” causes can’t make Illinois attractive to businesses. What’s actually attractive are low taxes, fewer regulations, less corruption and fiscal stability. Until Illinois embraces those policies, big names like Caterpillar and Boeing will continue to join the more than one million residents who have fled the state over the past two decades.

In Episode 36,Ted and Mark discuss the staggering amount of income that Illinois has lost since 2000 as well as a new poll showing a new leader in the race for the GOP nominee for Governor.

Wirepoints was on the ground in #rockford #illinois to uncover what's behind the district's dismal #student achievement. Following a scalding statewide report on Illinois' education system, Wirepoints focuses on Rockford. Wirepoints unveils systemic problems that have been allowed to persist for years. #schoolchoice may help. Watch the full statewide video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyAv1HTn8Mk&t=2s Read the complete report at: https://wirepoints.org/poor-student-achievement-and-near-zero-accountability-an-indictment-of-illinois-public-education-system-wirepoints-special-report/ #shorts #education #reform #shortvideo #shortsfeed #shortsvideo #parenting #children

Mark and Ted discuss the top stories of the week in Episode 35. Including more record setting gas prices and school funding practices that have plagued the state for decades.