MEGHAN FORTUNATO is a News Reporter for The Vidette. She can be contacted at mefortu@ilstu.edu. Follow her on Twitter at | @Meghanfortunato 

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ROCKFORD — State Rep. Dave Vella, D-Rockford, is promoting the Conference of Women Legislators Scholarship, which will help cover the cost of college for 10 Illinois women.

The COWL Scholarship is a one-year undergraduate scholarship that covers tuition and other expenses up to $2,500 for the 2021-22 academic year. The scholarship is awarded to 10 women who are over the age of 25, Illinois residents and are taking six or more semester hours either in-person or online at an Illinois accredited college or university. Applications are due May 1, with awardees to be notified by June 1.

To apply or for information: cowl.formstack.com/forms/cowl_scholarship_application.

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WIFR) – State Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, and Northwest Community Center will be sponsoring a drive-by free food giveaway on April 8.

Meridian Health is sponsoring the event that will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. in the parking lot of Northwest Community Center at 1325 N. Johnston Ave. in Rockford.

“As we continue to persevere through this pandemic and look forward to rebuilding our communities, we must not forget those that are struggling today,” West said.  “Through great partnership with Meridian Health and Northwest Community Center, we are going to be able to supply our community, our families with 200 boxes of food so that they can continue to put meals on their tables.”

Copyright 2021 WIFR. All rights reserved.

In 2001, Faith Colson was a 17-year-old student at Schaumburg High School, where she was a varsity athlete and a good student with lots of friends. But something else was happening to Colson: She was being groomed by a teacher to be sexually manipulated.

There were warning signs, Colson and others said in police interviews years later that led to the arrest and 2019 guilty plea of former teacher Ronald L. Williams on charges of criminal sexual abuse.

Other teachers recalled hearing about the inappropriate relationship, including one who said Williams told him about it, according to police reports from 2018.

This is where Colson believes the problem lies, and it’s why she has worked with state Rep. Michelle Mussman, a Democrat from Schaumburg, to write legislation, HB 1975, known as Faith’s Law.

The legislation aims to educate teachers and school staffs about grooming and how to identify the warning signs that a teacher may be sexually abusing a student.

For Colson and Mussman, the legislation means making sure others student are protected.

"(Teachers) saw boundary violating behaviors, they saw inappropriate conduct, but because they didn’t observe contact abuse, I think that’s where the problem lies," Colson said. "In people’s minds they think, ‘Surely if a teacher was sexually abusing a child I would see that.’"

"That’s where the misconception is, because no you won’t," Colson said. "Abusers know how to hide the criminal behavior of sexual contact, but they’re displaying these boundary violating behaviors that are observable."

Mussman’s bill would make it mandatory for schools to develop a sexual misconduct code of conduct, review employment histories, and teach students about grooming and sexual misconduct in sex education. It also would allow for schools to set up two days of in-service learning for teachers to train on identifying such behavior and set up a resource guide on sexual abuse for parents.

Beginning with the next school year, all schools would have to complete the teacher training by Jan. 31 annually.

State Rep. Fred Crespo, a Democrat from Hoffman Estates, filed sister legislation to Mussman’s bill, HB 3461, that also would require school districts to provide sexual abuse prevention training for students and staffs in schools. "The education for yourselves, for your colleagues and the ability to maybe better record or track (misconduct) is important," Mussman said. "That gray area is very hard to negotiate."

Teachers grooming students, essentially manipulating their trust and coercing them into sex, is the type of behavior this legislation aims to stop.

"This is a person who is in a position to decide your fate on a sports team, write a letter of recommendation or decide if you pass or fail a class. … There is a lot going on here," Mussman said.

Colson said she grew to trust Williams beginning when she was a junior in high school. She said it began as special attention, a compliment here and there, and eventually it led to isolation, inappropriate conversations, secrecy and then sex.

After his guilty plea, Williams was sentenced to 30 months of sex offender probation, paid $1,554 in fines and was ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years.

In a statement released after Williams’ arrest, Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 said DCFS, school officials and Schaumburg police investigated "suspicions about a relationship" in 2002 and "no findings of wrongdoing were discovered to have taken place during the period of the student’s enrollment at the time of the initial investigation."

Colson believes most teachers want to protect students but struggle to identify the warning signs when abuse is happening.

"Most teachers would never abuse a child," she said "and most teachers could never imagine someone else using their teaching authority to abuse a child. But it is very easy for this to happen.

"My whole goal is to equip teachers who are bystanders, who are safe and who are good teachers, to equip them to help children from the predators that are there."

Faith’s Law would take effect immediately if passed. On March 24 it passed through the House Education: School Curriculum and Policy Committee with a vote of 18-0.

ROCK ISLAND, Ill. — State Representative Mike Halpin (D) is hosting a community event on Saturday, April 3, at 11am at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in Rock Island, to hear public opinions on the state’s redistricting project. 

Every ten years, Illinois reexamines its district lines for the state’s House and Senate. Those lines are changed and redrawn depending on where population has grown, lost, or shifted. 

Now, the House is hosting 23 scheduled hearings across the state to gain input from the public. At these meetings the community is encouraged to share their opinions on demographic trends, communities of interest and other regional information that should be taken into consideration while forming new legislative districts, said a press release from Rep. Halpin’s team. 

“Our community has a wide range of voices, all of which deserve to be heard during a process as integral to our democracy as the redistricting process,” said Rep. Halpin. 

State Representative Tony McCombie (R) expects Illinois to lose at least one, and possibly two congressional seats, but doesn’t see the number of state seats changing just yet. 

“Us in the House, we will still have our 118 seats and the Senate will still have their seats, for now, but eventually if population continues to decline, we will see less of us as well,” she said.

Rep. McCombie finds fault with the community sessions, saying it’s not a truly independent way to redraw the lines. 

“Even though you’re taking the voice of the people at these meetings, the party in control gets to draw the line. So it’s really not an independent, fair map, as some would like to say. Which is a problem,” she argued. 

Rep. McCombie predicts that parts of her district in Rock Island County might be mapped out, after the redrawing process is complete. 

“We don’t know about me, whereas Representative Halpin is more in the urban area. So odds are, it would still be Halpin if he chose to run, and would still be Senator Anderson if he chose to run. So I’ll probably be mapped out either on the north end or the south end,” she said. “We’ll see what happens.” 

Individuals or groups interested in testifying should contact RedistrictingCommittee@hds.ilga.gov with the date and region of your desired hearing, along with a short description of what you’d like to discuss. 

A number of universities in Illinois didn’t require standardized test scores when students applied for the upcoming fall semester given the disruption COVID-19 had on high schools.

One state lawmaker is looking to extend this policy indefinitely for all public universities throughout the state.

State Rep. LaToya Greenwood (D-East St. Louis) said the inspiration for her proposal, HB 226 , was watching her son applying to colleges last year.

Greenwood said for many Illinois students, including her son, the scores they receive on standardized tests do not holistically represent their level of intelligence, nor their ability to handle college-level work.

By requiring SAT and ACT test scores as a part of the undergraduate admissions process, Greenwood said it acts as a barrier to postsecondary education and can even discourage students from applying at all.

“I just felt like there were more students like [my son],” Greenwood said. “The admissions process needs to be reflective of the whole student and not just focus on one aspect of the student.”

In addition to students who experience test anxiety, Greenwood said an overreliance on standardized test scores can disadvantage groups of students, including those who attend low-income schools or students who do not have regular access to broadband internet.

But Dr. Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, says throwing standardized tests to the wayside may not be the best path forward.

Koretz, who researches educational assessments and high stakes testing policies, said it’s important to frame the discussion around the quality of education students receive in K-12 schools as opposed to claiming standardized tests scores pose a bias in the admissions process.

“There are people who say, ‘Well, higher [socioeconomic status] kids have higher scores, so they’re more likely to get in,’” Koretz said. “That’s true; higher SES kids also go to better high schools. But that doesn’t mean [standardized test scores] don’t predict.”

Koretz said research indicating standardized test scores give admissions officers biased assumptions isn’t terribly strong.

“If you look at whether disadvantaged kids do better in college than their test scores predict, the answer is on average, no, they don’t,” Koretz said “That doesn’t mean there aren’t cases where it’s biased, but there isn’t evidence that it’s biased wholesale.”

Koretz said one purpose of achievement tests like the SAT and ACT is to assess a student’s level of understanding of content and skills they hopefully learned in their K-12 education in order to determine their ability to master college-level work. Another advantage, Koretz said, is using a universal metric that can evaluate scores from millions of students from across the country.

“High school grading standards are quite inconsistent. That’s why some admissions officers want test scores, because there are 13,000 school districts in the United States,” Koretz said. “If you’re getting applications from, let’s say, 7,500 high schools around the country, you have no way of knowing whether a 3.5 from high school ‘A’ means the same thing as the 3.5 from high school ‘B’.”

However, Koretz also notes although a student may be able to demonstrate through a high standardized test score that they are capable of taking a college-level math or science course, it does not necessarily mean the student is “college ready”.

Koretz said it’s important for college admissions officers to be able to determine whether a student applicant will be able to succeed once they come to campus, and hopefully stay enrolled.

Some institutions — like the University of California system which has questioned the effectiveness of standardized test scores for at least two decades — are advocating for the development of new assessments that not only measure a student’s understanding of linguistic and logical skills, but also creative thinking and multiple intelligences.

Last May, the University of California system decided to go test-optional and is in the process of designing a new college entrance test. If the system is unable to develop and adopt a new assessment by the 2025-2026 school year, standardized test scores will be eliminated entirely from the admissions process.

Some colleges in Illinois have already adopted a test-optional policy, including Southern Illinois University and the University of Chicago.

Meera Komarraju, the provost and vice chancellor of academic affairs at SIU Carbondale, said one reason her school decided to go test-optional was a recognition that some applicants have greater advantages when taking standardized tests compared to others, such as access to study guides or expensive tutors.

“By going test-optional, I think we are reducing the equity gaps and increasing the accessibility of a public education to a larger portion of the citizens,” Komarraju said.

Although the university still sees value in standardized test scores, they also find merit in evaluating non-test factors like a student’s GPA or their involvement in extracurricular activities.

Komarraju said SIU isn’t concerned its decision to go test-optional will negatively affect their ranking by U.S. News and World Report, and that they have consistently received praise from high school counselors.

“There are so many criteria that influence your ranking in U.S. News and World Report,” Komarraju said. “I think that one of those variables is your retention and your graduation rate. And I think that we already looked at the data before we made this decision. So we are not worried about that. ”

If passed in current form, Rep. Greenwood’s proposal would become effective on Jan. 1. Because there may be students who plan to send in standardized test scores this year in preparation for the Fall 2022 semester — students who perhaps wouldn’t do so if they knew they had an option — Greenwood said some universities may need to start adapting to the new policy ahead of the effective date, if the bill is signed into law.

Although Greenwood’s proposal would make submitting standardized test scores optional for college admissions, high school students would still be required to take assessments like the SAT for graduation purposes.

In December 2015, former President Barack Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act. This new federal education measure replaced the No Child Left Behind model enacted by former President George W. Bush.

Included in the federal mandates outlined in ESSA was a provision which allowed state governments to use college entrance exams, like the SAT and ACT, as their federal accountability requirement for high schools.

Since 2017, Illinois has used the SAT as its federal accountability assessment for high school juniors and seniors. Additionally, the state has also decided to administer the P-SAT exam to high school freshmen and sophomores since 2019. A school’s failure to administer said tests could jeopardize access to federal funding, such as Title I dollars.

“In addition to the administration of the SAT being a federal accountability requirement for districts, taking the SAT is also a statutory graduation requirement for all Illinois public school students,” Illinois State Board of Education spokeswoman Jackie Matthews said. “If a district did not administer the SAT, they would be putting their students’ ability to receive a high school diploma at risk.”

ISBE attempted to receive a test waiver this year from the U.S. Department of Education given the difficulties created by pandemic-necessitated distance learning. Although a similar waiver was granted in spring 2020, the Biden Administration has decided certain standardized tests, like the SAT and ACT, will still be required this spring.

ISBE has requested a separate accountability waiver from the Education Department which would allow schools to not be negatively affected by potentially low test scores.