State Superintendent Tony Sanders says Illinois students are moving fast toward recovery post-pandemic, but there is still “quite a distance to travel.”
The 2022-23 state report card shows math and reading scores improved from the previous year — 34% of students in the state were proficient in English and Language Arts, 26.9% were proficient in math.
While those numbers remain below pre-pandemic levels, Sanders said he’s encouraged by the growth.
“The English and Language Arts, especially I think, is a great sign for the state of Illinois that we are really back on track,” he said. “Certainly you always want to see greater growth than what we saw this year. But this was significant growth specifically in English and Language Arts. Math, we still have more work to do.”
School districts in Greater Peoria experienced similar growth in proficiency. Peoria Public Schools saw a growth rate of about 46% for both measures, compared with the state average of 50%.
Superintendent Sharon Kherat said the district is utilizing tutors and new curriculum to further improve proficiency rates, adding they’re working with teachers to create engaging math lessons.
“A lot of professional development [for teachers.] Exposing our children to grade level, we've talked about it time and time and time again, and following the curriculum as well,” she said. “Grade level work and and then of course, the individualization, the personalization, meeting them where they are.”
PPS and Chicago Public Schools are the only two large school districts with a more than 75% low-income student populations.
Kherat said they have tutors from local colleges, including Illinois Central College and Illinois State University, that help create individualized plans for students who may be struggling. The district also used a state grant to hire family navigators. They help provide extra support and learning resources so that students can practice skills at home.
“We just started this,” Kherat said. “So I'm anticipating a lot of growth and improvement as a result of those efforts.”
Many school districts in the tri-county area have a low-income student population higher than 50%.
Leonard Ealey, superintendent of District 108 in Pekin, said they have parent liaisons who help families in need with anything from a new pair of shoes to transportation to a dentist appointment.
The district also added 16 interventionists to help students who are struggling with certain subjects, as well hired school counselors for every school. Ealey said many younger kids have had to catch up on certain social-emotional skills.
“For example, I think a lot of times during COVID, children that normally would have gone to child care may not have gotten the child care,” he said. “Maybe during (the) COVID shutdown, you didn't have neighborhood interactions as much as you did. So kids are coming to the school with less social interaction skills than they had in the past, and so we've had to kind of step back from academics and focus on those social emotional needs.”
State Superintendent Sanders said it’s important to consider students' social-emotional needs during the pandemic recovery.
Sanders said he’s happy with the overall growth by students, but is particularly happy with progress made by Black students, who had the biggest gains in proficiency. But there is still a large gap between Black students and their white peers.
“I want to be clear that this is a result of our education system and not our students,” Sanders said. “We educate black students disproportionately in underfunded tier one school districts with more teacher vacancies, higher teacher and principal turnover [and] higher chronic absenteeism. So our black students in general have less access to support and resources they need to learn at the rate that they need to be on par with their peers.”
Sanders said the implementation of evidence-based funding in 2017 helped address some of these disparities, as well as culturally-responsive teaching.
Graduation rates
Sanders said evidence-based funding also contributed to the increase in graduation rates — 87.6% of students in Illinois graduated within four-years, and 89.3% graduated in six-years.
Most Tri-County schools had a graduation rate above 85%. Pekin Community High School had a rate of 92%, and 93% of Washington Community High School graduated in four years.
PPS achieved their highest graduation rate since the state began tracking the data — 81.2% of students graduated within four-years, up from 70.8% in 2019.
Kherat said the district provides alternative options for students to graduate, including night, weekend and online classes.
“So we're just going out and we're finding them and we're like, ‘hey, we have a plan. This one didn't work for you. But here's some other options,’” she said. “So we also have quite a bit of options. You know, because we believe one size doesn't fit all.”
About 87% of Illinois 9th graders are on track to graduate within four-years. Sanders said that metric is another tool to increase the graduation rate.
“University of Chicago research shows us that students who finished 9th grade on track, meaning that they've earned at least five full year course credits and have no more than one semester in a core class, are almost four times as likely to graduate from high school than students who are not on track,” he said.
Greater Peoria schools remain on trend there — 88.9% of 9th graders in Peoria Public Schools are on track to graduate in four years.
Chronic absenteeism
Sanders said chronic absenteeism and chronic truancy remains a problem for school districts statewide. Both measures reached record highs during the pandemic.
Chronic absenteeism means a student has missed at least 10% of the school year, about 17 days; 28.3% of Illinois students were chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year. Sanders said that’s a 5% improvement from the previous year.
“To continue to address absenteeism we have to establish, reestablish strong relationships with parents and families,” Sanders said. “We have to make the case for the value of school and the value of attendance every day. We have to make school a place where students want to go, where students feel safe, feel known and feel like they belong.”
Sanders said students' mandated five mental health days count toward chronic absenteeism, as do suspensions.
Kherat said the rate of chronic absenteeism is one of the biggest struggles for Peoria Public Schools The rate is 40.5%, one of the worst in the state.
PPS also had a student mobility rate of 20.3%. Student mobility is when students transfer in and out of school during the year.
Kherat said the district’s executive directors are meeting with their respective principals to create plans to lower the chronic absenteeism rate.
“There are some schools that, I would say, maybe need a structural shift,” Kherat said. “And I won't get ahead of that. But those are some of the things, like some of the high schools for example, we talked about even maybe, is it possible for some students to have a later start time?”
Superintendent Ealey from Pekin said lowering the chronic absenteeism rate is also one of their top priorities.
“We're going to start targeting how to get parents engaged in schools,” he said. “Getting students' in attendance, to incentivize them to get into school and want to be there. Teachers are working hard to make those personal connections with students.”
Teacher retention
Teacher retention improved in Greater Peoria and the rest of the state. Greater Peoria schools had a retention rate of 88% or higher, compared with the state average of 90%.
Sanders said he’d like to see that number grow even higher.
“While we have more and more teachers entering the profession and staying in the profession, we know we need to do more,” he said. “It is critical that we continue to invest in our teachers, invest in our school culture and climate and implement best practices for strengthening our teacher pipeline.”
Ealey credited his district’s 91% retention rate to professional development and additional support for teachers.
