Report card day has been gloomy for most schools in Illinois since the dawn of the No Child Left Behind era in 2002, with few schools hitting the benchmarks for performance on standardized tests.
According to student scores on the Prairie State Achievement Examination administered last month, none of the three highly regarded high schools in District 230 — Carl Sandburg, Amos Alonzo Stagg and Victor Andrew — met standards for “adequate yearly progress” established by state and federal standards.
Statewide, slightly more than half of all students passed the two-day exam, and only a third of all schools posted adequate yearly progress. District 230 students surpassed state averages on all tests, with 65 percent of students in the district meeting or exceeding standards on the Prairie State tests.
At a meeting last week of the district’s Education Committee, the panel of school board members, parents and school administrators reviewed the report card data issued by the state.
Much of the discussion focused on what data will be collected next year, when the state makes wholesale changes to the testing regime used for the report cards.
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“There were no surprises, really,” said Kim Dryier assistant superintendent of curriculum for District 230. “Do I dread (school report cards)? No, but I fear they do not give an accurate assessment of what we do as a district.”
The three schools in District 230 posted scores that were mostly in line with their performance on the tests in previous years. All three schools exceeded state averages in all areas of the tests, as well as scores on the ACT college entrance exam.
Dryier also noted that 96 percent of District 230 seniors will attend college, and the district’s scores on Advanced Placement tests and data on how many students return to college after their freshman year shows they are well-prepared for college-level work.
Schools that accept federal Title I funds face sanctions if they fail to meet AYP goals over several years, but District 230, which accepted Title I money for the first time his year, need not be concerned about the standards.
New test criteria, which will track student progress from year to year, are set to become the standard in 2015, and the district will likely fare far better on those tests, Dryier said.
“We have always focused on student growth, if we can take you from where you were to where you’re supposed to be,” said School Board President Frank Grabowski.
Test scores also showed all three schools in the district are relatively similar in academic achievement, with Stagg’s scores trailing the closely matched Andrew and Sandburg.
Several recent school board meetings grew contentious as district officials weighed — and eventually voted in favor of — changing the boundaries that determined which middle school students would attend Sandburg and which would go to Andrew.
District officials felt the move was necessary to balance the sizes of the student bodies at Sandburg and Andrew. The feeder schools for Stagg remained unchanged.
The average composite ACT scores at Sandburg was 23 and 22.4 at Andrew, and 71 percent of students passed the PSAE test at Sandburg, versus 67.6 percent at Andrew.
Stagg had a composite ACT score of 21.4 with 55 percent of students meeting or exceeding Prairie State standards. The scores for all three schools were above state averages.