A new report revealed Chicago has a number of nearly-vacant, underperforming schools, where officials spend outrageous amounts of money but still struggle to teach the remaining handful of students to read. (400tmax – iStock / Getty Images)
By Michael Schwarz March 2, 2026 at 1:51pm
A Reconstruction-Era Republican once described the dull-minded and buffoonish Democratic President Andrew Johnson as “always worse than you expect.”
Nowadays, we may apply that same simple assessment to public education, particularly in Democrat-run cities.
In a post Sunday on the social media platform X, school-choice advocate and research fellow Corey A. DeAngelis of the Heritage Foundation shared a chart with data on Chicago Public Schools that seemed so ludicrous as to defy belief.
The chart, courtesy of the Illinois-focused nonprofit research company Wirepoints, listed “Chicago Public Schools’ 20 most-empty schools.”
Incredibly, Douglass High School, with a student capacity of 912, had only 28 students enrolled.
Worse yet, the school spent a mind-boggling $93,787 per student. Despite (or because of) all that spending, exactly ZERO students achieved reading proficiency in 2024.
Worse still, Douglass boasted a 1:1 student-to-faculty ratio. That means, of course, that the school could have provided each student with his or her own full-time reading tutor.
Finally, for the cherry atop the fraud sundae, Douglass’ school principal made $171,173 in 2025.
Other Chicago high schools posted similarly abysmal enrollment and reading proficiency numbers. But none came close to Douglass’s stratospheric operational spending number of $93,787 per student.
Chicago has a public school with space for 912 kids, yet only 28 students are enrolled.
The school is 97% empty.
It spends $93,787 per student.
It’s staff to student ratio is 1:1.
ZERO of the kids are proficient in reading. pic.twitter.com/gB8LduQ2k2
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) March 2, 2026
It is no hyperbole to say that the CPS statistics defied belief. In fact, many X users refused to believe them.
This can’t be real.
— Simon (@HoustonHizzoner) March 2, 2026
This can’t be true
— Little Big Man (@HeathLongmire) March 2, 2026
How can this be real?
— 🇺🇲 Biscuits N Gravy (@Spencer_Chiclet) March 2, 2026
This can not be true!!!
— Translator (@can52309145) March 2, 2026
What’s the record for the most “This can’t be true” replies on a post that is actually true? This might set the mark. I had to dig in to other sources because it couldn’t be true. Yet… true. Unreal.
— Cap’n Ken (@capnken) March 2, 2026
Once convinced of the data’s accuracy, how does one begin to explain it?
In short, America’s communist enemies have captured its public schools.
“Our public institutions are failures. ‘The long march through the institutions’ is now complete,” one X user wrote.
Our public institutions are failures. “The long march through the institutions” is now complete
— The_Oracle (@RecordBrwnTrout) March 2, 2026
In 1934, Chinese Communist forces under Mao Zedong began their “Long March” during the Chinese Civil War. A strategic retreat that lasted a full year and covered 6,000 miles, the Long March lived on in legend as the event that prepared the Chinese Communist movement for its eventual victory in 1949.
Similarly, cultural Marxists such as the early-20th-century Italian communist Antonio Gramsci have long envisioned a similar “march” through Western institutions.
In short, the new cultural Marxist “long march” has succeeded, due largely to the unholy alliance between teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party. Wherever that alliance prevails, educational bureaucrats rake in millions, while students cannot read.
So yes, when it comes to public education, things are always worse than you expect. It remains to be seen whether the “long march” through American schools can be reversed.
Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.
Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.
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