Committee for Equity and Excellence in Education

Here is our letter to the Oak Park River Forest School Board. Please sign this petition to support this campaign and include your name in a letter which will be delivered to the Board and published in the local newspaper Wednesday Journal. 

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Seven years ago, after analyzing student data and concluding that OPRF’s institutional practice of tracking perpetuated educational inequity, D200 declared its commitment to a “transformative restructuring” of the freshman curriculum (OPRF Restructured Freshman Curriculum Analysis Report, September 2024). Then, after extensive research, teachers created the Freshman All- Honors Curriculum which now benefits the majority of students in the school. In the past three elections, the OPRF community demonstrated that it believes in the freshman program that expands opportunity for all students to experience honors level curriculum.

This semester the Freshman All-Honors Curriculum begins its fourth year. To ensure its sustainability and continued success, the D200 Board must provide additional–and more effective–supports for the program and establish an independent Curriculum Equity Advisory Group to monitor and make timely recommendations for curriculum equity.

Call for More Supports

Since the launch of Freshman All-Honors, the need for more supports has been repeatedly documented. After the program’s first year, an evaluation recommended more assistance for students scoring at lower levels on standardized tests (OPRF Restructured Freshman Curriculum Analysis, Sept. 2023). In the year two evaluation, parents requested more student assistance as well (Isobar Restructured Curriculum Analysis, Sept. 2024). Also, last year Black Oak Park researchers asserted that a lack of support for Black students’ success in honors and AP courses is a long-standing systemic harm that needs immediate correction (Historical Harms to the Black Community of Oak Park and Suggested Repairs, 2024). The District itself acknowledged that, post-pandemic, more academic and social supports were needed to achieve racial equity (OPRF MTSS Report, June 2023). Finally, an initial evaluation of the tutoring program points to the need for considerable revision if it is to address the learning needs of all students (OPRF Tutoring and Testing Center Update, June 2023). We, the undersigned, remind the D200 Board of their commitments to racial and educational equity and call on the Board to:

1. Require the District to provide more effective assistance to students in the Freshman All- Honors program, co-designed with impacted students and families.
2. Create an authentically independent Curriculum Equity Advisory Group that sets and monitors time-sensitive goals to ensure ongoing improvements to the Freshman All-Honors curriculum.

In doing so, the Board will act on its stated commitment to increased academic support with the same vigor it has exhibited for the physical reconstruction of the school.