Article Summary
- Illinois has long had some of the most rigorous proficiency standards in the nation for student performance.
- The Illinois State Board of Education is seeking to bring them closer to other states, which will boost proficiency scores in the upcoming school year.
- Illinois’ superintendent of education says the strict standards result in schools being unfairly labeled as needing interventions and students being inaccurately labeled as not on track for college or a career.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
SPRINGFIELD – Education officials in Illinois expect to see a marked increase this year in the percentage of students classified as proficient in reading, writing and math, along with a slight decline in proficiency rates in science.
That’s not because of any change in the way schools are teaching or how well students are learning, but rather a change in the way the state reports scores on the annual assessments students are given in those core subjects.
During a media briefing Tuesday, State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders said the new scoring system has been in development for about 18 months. Pending final approval by the State Board of Education, which is scheduled to vote Wednesday, the new grading system will be used in the 2025 report card that is due to be released this fall and will reflect scores from the tests students took this spring.
For years, those scores have been reported on the annual Illinois Report Card, which tells the public how students are performing overall, and which groups of students are falling behind. The scores are also used to hold schools accountable for improving student performance and bringing all demographic groups, including the most disadvantaged, up to proficiency.
But state officials have also complained for years that the way scores have been reported – and especially how scores are categorized as above or below the proficiency level – do not accurately reflect how well students are doing.
For example, recent report cards have shown that about two-thirds of Illinois high school graduates go on to enroll in a two- or four-year college within 12 months of graduation. But scores from the state assessments given each spring show fewer than half of them perform at grade level in English language arts, and even fewer are classified as proficient in math.
“Put simply, as currently designed, our proficiency rates do not reflect the reality of student progress,” Sanders said. “They’re misaligned with what it actually means to succeed in college and career.”
The inaccurate picture results from what are known as “cut scores” that divide students into different performance categories, Sanders said.
Federal law requires states to administer assessments and to report publicly how students are performing on those tests. But states are given great latitude in deciding where to draw the dividing lines between proficient and nonproficient, Sanders said. For many years, Illinois has had some of the most rigorous proficiency standards in the nation.
The consequences of that kind of scoring system go beyond merely unflattering report cards that show low percentages of students performing at grade level, he said. It also results in schools being unfairly labeled as needing interventions to improve their performance, and students themselves being inaccurately labeled as not on track for college or a career.
Proposed new system
Under the proposed new system, student scores will be divided into four performance categories: below proficient, approaching proficient, proficient, and above proficient. And a new system of cut scores will be used to separate students into those four categories.
The new scoring system will apply to the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, which covers English language arts and math in grades 3 through 8, as well as the Illinois Science Assessment, which is given to students in grades 5 and 8. It will also be used for the ACT exams, which will be used starting this year as the state assessment for students in 11th grade.
Sanders emphasized that because the state is establishing new performance categories and using new cut scores to define those categories, it will not be possible to compare proficiency rates under the new system with those of prior years.
“Proficiency rates in Illinois have been trending up, but on the 2025 report card, we will not be able to tell the magnitude of year-over-year improvement based on our proficiency data because 2025 sets a new baseline,” he said.
Instead, Sanders said, officials will compare future results with prior years using a metric called the Student Growth Percentile, which uses raw test scores to measure how much students have learned in a given year relative to their peers.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
