Despite an aggressive effort to improve academic achievement across the state, Illinois’ public school pupils slipped last school year in reading and writing and barely improved in math, according to test scores released Tuesday.
Results from the 2001 Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) also highlight a statewide problem: the achievement gap between minority and white pupils.
For example, about 65 percent of white pupils passed the 8th-grade math exam, compared with 19 percent of black pupils and 29 percent of Hispanic pupils. Similarly, 81 percent of white pupils passed the 4th-grade science exam, compared with 35 percent of blacks and 45 percent of Hispanics.
But education experts say the difference in achievement is best explained not by race but by income. Poverty, they say, is the single biggest determinant in test performance. Many of the state’s low-income students are minorities.
“One of the great scandals of American education is that we haven’t been able to do better for poor children,” said Larry Hedges, a professor of education at the University of Chicago who has studied the achievement chasm for a decade. “The gap between rich and poor has been observed for more than a century and, sadly, it continues today. We simply haven’t been able to develop a solution to solve the problem.”
In 1997, the State Board of Education instituted new academic standards for all Illinois public schools and devised new state exams–including the ISAT for elementary and middle school grades–to measure whether pupils are meeting them. State officials will release the high school results Thursday. Individual school districts must release scores by Oct. 31.About 436,000 3rd-, 5th- and 8th-grade students took the ISAT reading, math and writing tests last spring. About 297,000 4th and 7th graders took the science and social science exams.
About 38 percent of all 3rd-, 5th- and 8th-grade pupils failed the state reading test, compared with 36 percent the year before. On the writing test, about 37 percent failed, compared with 34 percent in 2000.
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The bright spot was mathematics, in which 62 percent of the pupils passed the state test, compared with 58 percent the year before. It was the first time in the test’s three-year history that as many 8th graders passed the exam–50 percent–as failed it.
State officials said the minority achievement gap presents a mixed bag, because it is narrowing on some tests but widening on others, mirroring national trends.
The less than impressive results come as a blow to state and local officials who have spent the last three years in an aggressive effort to improve student performance. They had hoped that after three years of aligning curriculum to the new, more rigorous learning standards, scores would improve substantially.
State Supt. of Education Glen “Max” McGee called the results disappointing and said the division between white and minority performance is intolerable and inexcusable.
“We are not progressing fast enough,” McGee said during a news conference in Springfield. “We have some nice movement in math, but we have an achievement gap we need to address and, obviously, reading and writing need continued emphasis.”
The continued poor results are partly to blame for McGee’s impending departure. Members of the Illinois State Board of Education asked for McGee’s resignation last week, in part because test scores are not improving fast enough. He will leave at the end of the year.
Still, the snail-like progress of Illinois’ students is identical to what other states have seen after instituting tougher standards and assessments. Most states have seen only incremental improvement.
McGee used his news conference to highlight the achievement gap and renew a call for restructuring the state’s school funding formula, which relies more heavily than most states on local property taxes. As a result, some wealthy communities spend as much as $16,000 per pupil, while some poorer ones spend only $4,000.
“It simply is not fair,” McGee said. “I do not believe that these districts are getting the resources they need under our current system of funding.”
Timothy Shanahan, a professor of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and director of the university’s Center for Literacy, said children who come from low-income homes face more educational obstacles. They are more likely to come from single-parent homes, and their parents are less likely to be college-educated and more likely to be out of work.
Money can help level the playing field, he said. “We can’t make all the parents equal and all the community’s equally safe, but we can make sure that kids get the same thing in every school,” Shanahan said. “It’s not fair and it’s not prudent to leave these kids behind. They are our future and we will pay for it if we do not make sure they are properly educated.”
Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan said state and local officials need to look for long-term solutions, not quick fixes.
“It won’t happen overnight,” Duncan said. “The key to closing the achievement gap is to provide truly outstanding educational opportunities across the board. We as a state have to find a way to do that.”