Lake County Gazette

Stevenson High School (SHS) District 125 teacher Christopher Salituro is resigning after 23 years of teaching due to what he deems a “morally corrupt” assessment system.

“This letter is to regretfully announce my resignation from the district at the end of this school year,” Salituro said in an email. “I have served proudly and honorably for 23 years. For more than 15 years I was selected for senior awards night as a teacher who made a difference in students’ lives. I have earned three Ambassador Awards from the board. My Student Voice Survey SEL data has been consistently and substantially above the average for SHS (20+ percentage points). I have appreciated the ways that the district has helped me thrive in my discipline; I was able to serve for 10 years as one of only two high school teachers in the nation to be on the American Sociological Association High School Advisory Board. I was able to be a co-author of both the National Standards for High School Sociology and the C3 (Common Core) standards for sociology.” 

Salituro recounted several of his leadership influence on his peers, students and his team. Despite the appreciation of how the district has enabled him to achieve these, he felt he needed to transition out of education for reasons, he said, he has been expressing over time. 

“I was a pioneer of the Loyola University Chicago Dual Credit Program. And one of the myriad anecdotal examples of my impact is when two of my former students who met in my class were so inspired by my class that they asked me to be the presider at their wedding," he said. "In short, I am very proud of all that I have done for the district and I appreciate the many ways that the district helped me to become a national leader in teaching high school sociology. However, teaching in the district has become pedagogically and morally untenable for me. My willingness to be a team player and a pedagogical pioneer led me to attempt the Evidence Based Reporting (EBR) assessment practices as early as 2013. I spent countless hours leading my team to research, create and revise this method of assessing. But, as early adopters, we discovered that EBR assessment practices were flawed. I tried to voice concerns about the assessment practices over the years and I have documented evidence of voicing concerns to the SHS administration.”

The resignation of Salituro and others comes as the state’s student body is hitting a crisis point with very poor student outcomes, Madison - St. Clair Record reported. According to the Illinois State Board of Education Report Card, one district in the state has only 2% of students reading at grade level and only 1% doing math at grade level.

“Our assessment is harsh because student outcomes are beyond dismal and no one, it seems, takes any responsibility for them,” Wirepoints noted in a recent report. 

Earlier this year, Lake County Gazette reported that Stevenson High School itself has been accused of engaging in politically motivated policies that has hurt its student body. The school was targeted by protestors for holding onto masking rules despite their invalidation as unconstitutional by a downstate judge. In particular, the school district stands accused of forcing disabled children to follow COVID-19 protocols despite exceptions being present in state law for disabled children.

Stevenson High School mother Lisa Katz has a special needs son who is a student at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire. Despite his severe autism and being granted a medical exemption to masking, her son was held out of school for not masking. In February, Katz said the school kept her son out indefinitely noting “exposure” rather than allowing him to continue to go to school without a mask. 

“That's the reason he's out for 10 days, because he cannot wear a mask so that he's (being) penalized,” she told the Lake County Gazette.

Salituro is one of an estimated 317 teachers working at the school district which spends $32 million per year in taxpayer dollars. Its head, superintendent Eric Twaddle, makes $217,609 per year, according to Better Government Association.