Thrive65

Analysis

Why Student Supports Matter

What’s at Stake When Student Supports Are Cut

At a glance

On October 13, District 65’s administration will present about $20 million in reductions, and administrators have said programs not mandated by law are under review. This sheet explains why the choice of which cuts matters so much for students’ long-term prospects.

The district has said the same things matter. In its September 14 presentation, the administration listed what it heard from the community, including supporting the most vulnerable students, keeping staff who support students’ mental health and social-emotional needs, keeping class sizes small, and access to arts, athletics, and extracurriculars. It called these the lens for its decisions, while acknowledging there will be an impact (D65 board presentation, Sept. 14, 2026, slide 26).

The ask: judge each proposed cut by its likely effect on students, and protect the supports with the strongest evidence and the fewest substitutes. A companion sheet covers early childhood education in detail.

What “non-mandated” means

A non-mandated program is one no state or federal law requires D65 to offer. That label describes legal obligation. It says nothing about how much a program matters to students or how much it saves.

The district has not released its list. Based on district presentations and community discussion, Thrive65’s September community briefing grouped what may be at risk into two categories (Thrive65 Community Briefing, Sept. 2026, slide 10; see also Evanston RoundTable, Sept. 20, 2026).

Non-mandated programs at risk Other cuts/fees that have been raised
Early Head Start and Head Start Special education spending
Preschool for All Counselors and librarians
School Age Child Care and other child care programs Instructional enhancements beyond the state-required curriculum
Optional components of magnet and choice programs AVID, an academic support program for students who would be first in their families to attend college
Athletics, clubs, and other extracurricular activities FACE (Family and Community Engagement) liaisons
Field trips and summer enrichment New or higher fees for families,and a possible referendum

These are possibilities raised in public discussion, not a district proposal. The October 13 package will show which are actually on the table.

Where non-mandated programs fit in the district’s plan. The administration’s September 14 presentation sets an FY28 target of about $20 million, roughly 10% of a budget of about $200 million, built from six areas: staffing and compensation, non-mandated programs, district footprint (closing at least two more schools), transportation, other purchased services, and new revenue (D65 board presentation, Sept. 14, 2026, slides 27, 28, 30). The presentation does not say how much is expected from non-mandated programs. That share is one of the most important numbers to watch on October 13.

These cuts come on top of earlier ones. The district reports about $26 million in reductions and more than 170 full-time positions eliminated across FY25 to FY27. Those rounds already reduced transportation, summer programming, and School Age Child Care services (D65 board presentation, Sept. 14, 2026, slide 15). When a program has been cut before, a further cut can be the one that ends it.

Many of these sit on both sides of the line. A few examples:

When the October 13 package comes out, it will help to sort each item three ways: what is truly optional, what partly supports a legal requirement, and what saves less than it appears because of grants or shifted costs.

Gaps form early in D65 and then hold steady

Stanford researcher Sean Reardon, who analyzed about 215 million test scores from nearly every U.S. school district, presented his findings at Evanston Township High School in May 2017. His central point for Evanston: gaps by race and income were already wide by 3rd grade, and students in every group grew at roughly the same rate from 3rd to 8th grade, so the gaps changed little (Evanston RoundTable, May 17, 2017). He also found that D65’s Black students outscored Black students in 78% of U.S. districts, and that the size of Evanston’s gap reflects how far ahead white and affluent students start (same source).

Reardon’s team has since updated these figures. The Education Scorecard, a joint project of Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project and Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research, reports D65 results through spring 2024 in grade levels above or below the 2019 national average for grades 3 to 8 (Education Scorecard, D65 fact sheet, Feb. 2025):

Student group Math 2019 Math 2024 Reading 2019 Reading 2024
All D65 students +1.76 +1.09 +1.13 +0.92
White +4.25 +3.08 +3.33 +2.74
Asian +3.53 +2.77 +2.46 +1.95
Hispanic +0.13 -0.40 -0.73 -0.63
Black -1.10 -1.84 -1.46 -1.67
Illinois, all students -0.03 -0.32 +0.11 -0.26

D65 as a whole still scores above both the state and national averages. The gap between white and Black students remains close to five grade levels in math and four and a half in reading. The gaps narrowed slightly since 2019 mainly because white students’ scores fell more, while Black students lost ground in both subjects. The fact sheet also reports that chronic absenteeism in grades 3 to 8 rose 11 percentage points between 2019 and 2023. These results describe outcomes by grade 3 and later; they reinforce that the starting gap is large, but they do not by themselves show what caused it. The scorecard does not report D65 results by family income.

D65’s own data shows the same pattern from a different angle:

The newest district data shows the same pattern

The district’s 2025-26 Achievement and Accountability Report gives a current view of both ends of the K-8 span. The share of students at or above benchmark in early literacy (kindergarten to 2nd grade) already looks much like the share proficient in English by grades 3 to 8:

Student group K-2 at or above early literacy benchmark Grades 3-8 proficient or above in English (state test)
White 74% 85%
Multiracial 65% 81%
Asian 63% 70%
Hispanic or Latino 26% 53%
Black 25% 41%
Low-income 26% 42%
Students with IEPs 24% 26%
English learners 20% 27%

Source: D65 Achievement and Accountability Report 2025-26, pp. 39-40, 43. These are different tests with different cut points (the district set its early literacy benchmark at the 67th national percentile, p. 59), so compare the patterns rather than the exact numbers.

The report also found that growth is now close to equal across groups: between 52% and 68% of students in every racial group met their math growth goal, as did 56% of students with IEPs, 55% of English learners, and 54% of low-income students (p. 26). That matches what Reardon described: once students are in school, most groups grow at similar rates, so the gaps that exist in the early grades carry forward. The district’s own summary puts it plainly: “The current pace of growth alone will not close these gaps” (p. 26).

Why 3rd grade matters beyond D65: a national study of nearly 4,000 students found that children not reading proficiently by the end of 3rd grade were four times as likely to leave high school without a diploma. For children who had also lived in poverty, the rate rose to 26% (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011).

What this means for the budget: the supports that reach children before and during the early grades are where a dollar has the most room to change a trajectory, and cuts there are hardest for later grades to make up.

A note on dates: Reardon’s original analysis covers 2009 to 2013 (updated through 2024 in the Education Scorecard table above), and the kindergarten readiness and K-3 trajectory figures above are from 2015 to 2019. The current figures in this section come from the district’s 2025-26 report.

What research says about cutting school budgets

Cuts show up in student outcomes

During the Great Recession, per-student spending in U.S. public schools fell about 7%. Northwestern economist Kirabo Jackson and colleagues used differences in how exposed each state’s school funding was to the downturn to isolate the effect of those cuts (Jackson, Wigger, and Xiong, 2021). They found:

How a district spends matters as much as how much

A second line of research carries a lesson that cuts both ways. University of Illinois at Chicago researchers Paul Zavitkovsky and Steven Tozer studied 709 Illinois districts from 2001 to 2016 (Evanston RoundTable, July 12, 2017):

The authors also found that achievement tracked how equitably regions funded instruction, while cautioning that the pattern does not prove cause and effect.

What education researchers prioritize

In September 2026, The New York Times asked 37 education researchers, including Sean Reardon, to rate 30 ideas for improving student achievement on a scale of 1 to 7 for effectiveness and cost, assuming each was done well (New York Times, Sept. 28, 2026). The Times describes the survey as a useful read of expert opinion, not a scientific poll, and it measured only academic achievement. Several results bear on D65’s choices:

Idea Effectiveness (1-7) Cost (1-7) Rank for effectiveness
Small-group tutoring during the school day 6.0 5.2 1st
Science of reading (systematic, phonics-based reading instruction) 5.3 3.2 2nd
Universal pre-K 4.8 5.9 Tied for 3rd
Increase per-student funding 4.8 6.5 Tied for 3rd
Higher pay for teachers at high-poverty schools 4.8 4.1 Tied for 3rd
High-quality, district-vetted curriculum 4.5 3.0 9th
Non-academic supports for students 4.5 5.6 10th
Smaller class sizes 3.8 6.5 21st
Increase mental health spending 3.5 5.0 23rd

Two lessons line up with the rest of this sheet. Early learning and early reading supports rank near the top, consistent with D65’s own data showing gaps form before 3rd grade. And the panel stressed execution: the Times reports that the experts saw quality pre-K as highly cost-effective and low-quality pre-K as little more than subsidized child care. The researchers’ shared view, in Georgetown’s Marguerite Roza’s words: “Implementation is everything.”

What this means for D65: budget reductions carry risk for students, and that risk can be managed. A district that cuts what has weak evidence and protects what works, especially strong school leadership and early-grade supports, can lose dollars without losing as much ground.

What specific supports do

Research on individual programs is uneven. Some supports have strong causal evidence; others are studied mostly through correlations. This table sticks to studies we could verify and names their limits.

Support What studies found Limits Students who rely on it most
Early childhood education Long-run gains in graduation, college, and earnings; fewer special education placements Quality decides results Children from families with lower incomes; children with developmental delays. See the early childhood sheet
Elementary school counselors One added counselor reduced misbehavior and raised boys’ achievement by more than one percentile point (Carrell and Hoekstra, 2014). In North Carolina elementary and middle schools, more counselors meant higher math scores and fewer absences (Professional School Counseling, 2022) Effects are modest in size; social workers specifically are less studied Students facing stress at home or behavior challenges
Lower counselor caseloads Fewer repeat discipline problems, with larger effects for minority and low-income students (Carrell and Carrell, 2006). In high-poverty Missouri schools, meeting the recommended ratio of one counselor per 250 students was associated with better attendance and graduation and fewer discipline incidents (Lapan et al., 2012). A nationally representative study of elementary schools linked more counselor access to better student behavior and concluded there may be substantial benefits from adding elementary counselors (Reback, 2010) Carrell and Carrell covers one Florida district; the Missouri study is of high schools and shows association, not cause; Reback is national but cannot fully rule out other differences between schools Students at risk of suspension
School bus eligibility Raised attendance and lowered chronic absence for economically disadvantaged students in Michigan (Education Finance and Policy). Kindergartners who rode the bus were about 2 percentage points less likely to be chronically absent (Education Week) Little effect for higher-income students, and no detectable effect on test scores in the Michigan study Families without a car or with inflexible work hours
Early reading support Children not reading proficiently by 3rd grade were four times as likely not to finish high school (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011) Shows risk, not which interventions work best Early readers who arrive behind

The pattern across these studies: supports that look peripheral on a budget sheet often work through attendance, behavior, and readiness, which are the conditions that let classroom teaching take hold. Their benefits also concentrate among students with the fewest outside resources.

Who carries the risk

When a school support goes away, some families can replace it. They hire a tutor, pay for private preschool or therapy, or drive their child to school. Others cannot. Reardon reported that families in the top income quartile nationally spend about $9,000 a year on each child, compared with about $1,300 in the bottom quartile (Evanston RoundTable, May 17, 2017). That difference is the mechanism: cuts to optional supports fall hardest on students whose families have the least room to fill the gap.

In D65, that describes a broad and varied group of families:

The district’s own snapshot of its 5,893 students shows how many children are in this position: 37.9% are from low-income families, 20.6% have IEPs, 15.3% are English learners, and 6% changed schools during the year (D65 board presentation, Sept. 14, 2026, slide 5). These groups overlap, and together they are a large share of the district.

Two trends in the district’s newest report bear directly on the supports most likely to be cut:

There is also a bright spot that shows what an optional program can do. In the district’s two-way immersion program, 49% of K-2 English learners were at or above benchmark in Spanish early literacy, compared with 20% on the English version (p. 27). The district called this meaningful evidence that biliteracy instruction in the earliest grades is working. Optional components of choice and language programs are on the list of what could be cut.

None of this makes any group a monolith. Plenty of families in each category are doing well. The point is about which families have a cushion when the district pulls back, and which do not.

This has happened before

D65 has faced enrollment drops and budget pressure before, and past responses often moved the same students. When enrollment fell in the 1970s, the district closed schools, including Foster School in 1979, and redrew boundaries. The Evanston Human Relations Commission reported in May 1979 that a Black child was four times as likely as a non-Black child to be bused a distance to school (Evanston RoundTable, “The Role of Foster School…,” March 21, 2019; see also “School District 65: The end of an era,” March 8, 2024). Thrive65’s briefing also cites a 2001 figure that Black students accounted for 57% of non-magnet, non-language-program busing (Thrive65 Community Briefing, Sept. 2026, slide 9). More recently, the closure of Bessie Rhodes removed what the district itself described as its only fully bilingual school and its most racially and socioeconomically diverse (D65 Achievement and Accountability Report 2025-26, p. 11).

That history is a reason to look closely at where this round of cuts lands, and to ask for an equity impact review of the package before the board votes.

Fair points, with context

Doing nothing is not an option. D65’s chief financial officer has said the district will run out of cash by fiscal year 2030 without cuts (Evanston Now, Sept. 2026). Delay makes the eventual cuts deeper. Protecting students means making smart cuts now.

D65 is staffed more heavily than its peers, and the gap varies by role. The district’s September presentation compares D65 with seven peer districts (D65 board presentation, Sept. 14, 2026, slides 11-13):

Staff type D65 students per staff member Peer average What it suggests
Certified staff [1] 8.5 10.6 About 20% more licensed staff per student than peers
Non-certified staff [2] 10.6 23.5 More than twice as many per student; the highest of the peer group
Administrators 140 (projected 2026) 136 statewide In line with the state after recent reductions
  1. Teachers, specialists, and others who hold a state license
  2. Roles that do not require a license, which can include Paraprofessionals, clerical, and other support staff)

Some staffing reductions are reasonable, and the non-certified comparison stands out. It also covers many of the people who work most directly with students who need extra help. Before cuts are made there, the community should know which roles are counted, how many support IEPs, and which serve students in early grades.

Costs are rising faster than cuts can keep up. Compensation is budgeted to grow by $8.95 million from FY26 to FY27, including a 19.2% rise in benefits (D65 board presentation, Sept. 14, 2026, slide 18). Without a change in that trajectory, the district projects running out of cash in FY30 (slide 21).

Some popular priorities rank poorly on academic value alone. In the New York Times expert survey described above, smaller class sizes and increased mental health spending both ranked among the least cost-effective ideas for raising test scores. Experts doubted districts can make classes small enough to matter, which research puts at around 15 students. That supports the administration’s argument that some staffing ratios can come down, and it complicates the community’s stated priority of small classes. On mental health, the survey counted only academic achievement, and the Times notes that students’ mental health and well-being matter for other reasons. The research cited in this sheet ties counselors mainly to behavior and attendance, which are the measures that worsened in D65 this year. Those worsening numbers are a reason to ask the district why, before deciding what to cut. Possible factors include structural ones (caseloads after earlier staffing reductions), process ones (how behavior support and referrals work in each building), and policy ones. One policy change worth examining: in 2021 the district phased out self-contained special education classrooms in nine schools and placed more students with disabilities in general education classrooms (Evanston RoundTable, Oct. 8, 2026). Whether that shift, and the loss of separate spaces for small-group and pull-out support, has affected behavior and the demands on support staff is an open question the district should answer with its own data. Class size remains a reasonable place to look for savings if early-grade reading and intervention are protected.

Questions to ask the board and administration

  1. For each proposed cut, which students does it serve, and what evidence did the administration weigh about its effect on them?
  2. The administration named supporting the most vulnerable students and keeping mental health and social-emotional staff as community priorities. How does each proposed cut line up with those priorities?
  3. Behavior incidents nearly doubled last year and suspension disproportionality grew. How will potential proposed changes to counselors, social workers, and paraprofessionals affect the district’s plan to reverse that?
  4. What does the district’s own analysis show about why behavior incidents rose and engagement fell? Has it looked at caseloads, building-level processes, and the effects of the 2021 shift away from self-contained special education classrooms and separate pull-out spaces?
  5. Which roles make up the non-certified staffing comparison, and how many of them support students with IEPs or students in the early grades?
  6. What is the net savings of each cut, considering potential lost grant revenue, reimbursements, and costs that shift elsewhere?
  7. The district’s own report credits two-way immersion with strong early biliteracy results. Are any optional parts of language or choice programs proposed for cuts, and what would replace them?
  8. How will the district track the effect of these cuts on attendance, behavior, engagement, early literacy, and 3rd-grade reading, and report back publicly?

Talking points

For a two-minute public comment, choose a couple and add your own experience.

Sources

District 65 documents

Thrive65

Law and regulation

Local news, 2026

Local news and history, 2017-2025 (Evanston RoundTable)

Research and data