Chapter 10: Only 1 in 5 high school graduates are ready for college
High school seniors throughout Illinois are half a year from graduation and college, the culmination of 13 years of public schooling.
The state is half a year from completing its constitutional duty to give these seniors a free and efficient education.
Taxpayers know the schools weren't free.
Data show the schools weren't efficient.
Between August 1996 -- when today's seniors began first grade -- and June, taxpayers funneled nearly $200 billion into the Illinois public school system.
Yet, just 21 percent of Illinois seniors leaves the billion-dollar system ready for college -- or the workplace.
In the suburbs, the results aren't much better.
SCHOOL FINANCE 101 Get the Daily Herald's School Finance 101 series in a single file which includes the stories and related data. PDF documentChapter 10 Chapter 10: 1 in 5 graduates college ready Bottom line on schoolsStudent costs and ACT scores
Here is the cost of educating a typical student, listed by elementary district with the high school district number in parentheses. View reportAlso available is a downloadable list of the same information.
[XLS document]Chapter 9
Here is the total amount of revenue area school districts collected in 2005-06, the total amount of bond debt for each district, their enrollment and how much the bond debt equals on a per-student basis. View report
Also available is a downloadable list with expanded information, including 1998-99 data (the earliest year electronically available), ADA (average daily attendance) for both years, plus bond debt as a percent of 2005-06 total revenue.
[XLS document]
Chapter 8
The Daily Herald combined 2005-06 statistics for area high schools and their feeder elementary districts. These are presented here next to unit districts (single K-12 districts) for comparison. After each high school district are its feeder districts in parentheses. We then list the total revenue for each unit and combined high school/feeder district, the number of students, total revenue per student, the amount of revenue from local sources (mostly property taxes and school fees), the administrative expenditures per student, superintendent compensation (excluding health insurance costs) and superintendent compensation per student. View report
Also available is a downloadable Excel file with the same information
[XLS document]
Chapter 7