5 facts they don’t want you to know about Illinois’ 2023 student test results

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By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner, Wirepoints

Nov 1, 2023

A quick glance at the Illinois State Board of Education’s new 2023 Illinois Report Card will leave you thinking things are relatively good in Illinois’ schools. The board’s press release says “families should be proud of the remarkable progress we see.”

It claims the “2023 Illinois Report Card shows strong progress with increased proficiency rates and highest graduation rate in 13 years.” And the subtitle goes on: “Improvement in many indicators led by gains for black students.”

But Wirepoints has analyzed the 2023 data and found there’s little to cheer about. Yes, 2023 student outcomes are somewhat improved over 2022, but they are still below pre-covid 2019 levels. And that’s despite a whopping $6 billion increase in operating expenses statewide.

Below we list out five counterpoints to ISBE’s hopeful rhetoric, including two that refute their main headlines.

1. 2023 student outcomes are still below pre-covid 2019 despite a 30% per student spending increase over that time.

Reading and math proficiencies are still behind their pre-covid levels despite a $4,200 increase in per student operational spending since 2019 – 30% more.

The number of school students reading at grade level was just 34.6% in 2023, lower than the 37.4% in 2019.

Outcomes were even worse in math. Just 26.9% were proficient in 2023 vs 32.0% in 2019.

2. A “record-breaking” graduation rate means little as SAT math scores hit new a low.

ISBE continues to make a big deal about its ever-increasing graduation rates even as fewer and fewer high school students test proficient on the SAT.

Illinois SAT scores have been on a general decline ever since they were first introduced in 2017. That year, 39.8% of students tested proficient in reading and 36.4% were proficient in math. Yet 87% graduated

In 2023, the graduation rate improved to 87.6%, yet math proficiency has fallen to a record low of just 26.7% of students and reading is at a near-low of 31.6%.

3. Minorities continue to suffer the most.

Yes, black students did make gains in 2023 in both reading and math. But the more honest story is dire.

Black students have yet to get back to their pre-covid levels, with just 16% able to read at grade level. For math, just 8% of blacks are at grade level.

Just one more note on the “improvement” of black scores. The reading results for blacks in cities across the state show just how deeply flawed Illinois’ education system has become.

4. Over two-thirds of Illinois schools are labeled “Commendable” despite the collapse in student proficiency.

Illinois’ “accountability” standards remain broken in 2023 and that includes the metric for school performance. Schools are given one of five designations by ISBE: exemplary, commendable, targeted, comprehensive and intensive.

72 percent of rated Illinois schools were given the 2nd-highest rating of “commendable” despite that only 33 percent of students in those schools were able to read at grade level.

That’s because a school’s “summative designation” is based not just on proficiency but “on multiple measures of school performance, including student growth for elementary and middle schools and graduation rate for high schools.” In other words, schools are graded on a curve.

That leads to absurd results where schools with single-digit reading proficiency scores are rated “commendable” by ISBE.

5. Illinois still lacks accountability for teachers: 97 percent were rated “excellent or proficient” in 2023

Official teacher evaluations are entirely out-of-sync with student outcomes. Just 35% of Illinois students were able to read at grade level in 2023 and yet 97% of teachers were rated “excellent or proficient.”

In fact, of the 702 districts that performed teacher evaluations in 2023, 451 of them – nearly two-thirds – declared every single one of their teachers was “excellent or proficient.”

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ISBE’s press release shows why Illinois’ education system remains unfixable. As long as the state’s leadership refuses to acknowledge its problems, hundreds of thousands of students will continue to struggle and suffer as they enter the workforce without the basic skills they need.