The Illinois State Board of Education has published the 2024 Illinois Report Card, its annual roundup of how the state and each public school within it performed during the previous school year.
The report card is the main tool of Illinois’ school accountability system and “offers a complete picture of student and school performance in order to inform and empower families and communities as they support their local schools,” according to the state board of education’s website.
The state board collects data on a range of academic and student success metrics and then assigns schools one of five categories according to their performance. Those in the lowest-performing three categories receive assistance and funding to improve.
To create the report card for districts and their schools, the state board gathers data from school districts for various “accountability indicators.” Schools get a score on a scale of 100 for each indicator. Those indicator scores are then weighted and added up to calculate a school’s “index score,” also out of 100. The state board also creates an index score for all student groups within a school.
The state board then issues a “summative designation” to each school based on its index score. The highest-performing 10% of schools receive an “exemplary” designation and the lowest-performing 5% of schools receive a “comprehensive support” designation.
All schools in between receive a “commendable” designation, unless one or more of the school’s student groups is performing in line with the lowest-performing 5% of schools, in which case the school receives a “targeted support” designation.
Schools receiving the targeted or comprehensive support designations for the first time start a four-year improvement plan with assistance from the state board and additional funding.
If a school was previously given the comprehensive support designation and completed a four-year improvement cycle but hasn’t shown progress, it is then designated as “intensive support” and subject to more rigorous state involvement.
Below is a searchable table showing how metro-east schools performed on key metrics on the 2023-24 Illinois Report Card. Scroll below the table for definitions of each metric.
The state board of education defines the metrics in the above table as follows:
- The English language arts (ELA) and math proficiency rates are the percentages of students who met proficiency criteria on state standardized tests.
- The English language arts (ELA) and math growth percentiles measure how much a school’s students grew compared to their academic peers who started at the same level. It does not show how much they grew academically, only whether their growth was above or below the state average, which is always the 50th percentile. (This field is left blank for high schools because there is currently no way to measure growth with only one required standardized test, the SAT for juniors.)
- The chronic absenteeism rate is the percentage of students who miss 10% percent or more of the school year with or without a valid excuse, which is 18 days for the average 180-day school year.
- The teacher retention rate is the three-year average percentage of teachers returning to work at the same school.
- The four-year high school graduation rate is the percentage of graduating students who entered ninth grade for the first time four years prior to the year being reported. (This field is left blank for elementary and middle schools.)
Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat. Kelly Smits is a reporter for the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
