There is a basic flaw in comparing Chicago and suburban school scores. The Chicago high schools are presently segregated based on innate test scoring ability. Magnet high schools such as Walter Payton and Northside Prep admit only naturally-high-scoring students. Therefore, these schools always score high on standardized tests.

Those students who are not naturally high scorers go to neighborhood schools, The low and average scorers in these schools always score below average because if you add up low and average scores, with no high scores to balance them off as in a normal school population, below average school scores result. Suburban schools, such as Downers Grove and Naperville, take all students in the district, naturally high, average and low scorers, and are normal populated schools always scoring higher than the neighborhood schools of Chicago such as Fenger and Carver which have only naturally average and low scorers.

The state of Illinois system and No Child Left Behind Act system of comparing all schools based on test scores does not take the differences in types of school populations some of which are populated based natural test scoring ability and are skewed. Some of the Chicago schools, scoring below average test scores, are not really "failing schools," but are scoring where they are supposed to score based on the natural test scoring abilities of their school populations. Many suburbanites are not aware of this difference in Chicago and suburban schools.

Stewart E Brekke

Downers Grove