Students who took Illinois state exams last spring showed improvement in math in almost every grade, while passing rates for reading mostly dropped, though not dramatically, according to results obtained by the Tribune.
The 2014 state exams for grade school students were considered the toughest ever, with far more difficult questions and a higher threshold required to pass, so the results surprised some local educators.
“If the standards are more difficult, then you would more likely see these scores go down,” said Chris Brandt, head of assessment in St. Charles School District 303. Brandt said students in his district have been showing progress on local math exams, which reinforces the gains seen on state tests.
Across third through eighth grades statewide, 55 to 64 percent of students passed the math and reading exams of the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests, a fixture in public schools since 1999.
The spring 2014 exams marked the last time schoolchildren will take the reading and math ISATs. The state will launch a new set of exams later this school year.
The Illinois State Board of Education has not yet released statewide test results to the public. The Tribune obtained them from local districts that received the state data and have been presenting the results to their boards.
In earlier years, it was common to see much higher percentages of students passing the ISATs. But the state raised the scores required to pass beginning in the 2013 test year to better prepare students for tougher exams in the future. That caused passing rates to plummet.
At the same time, more difficult questions were added to the exams, based on the more rigorous Common Core standards for what students need to know. In 2013, only 20 percent of test questions were based on Common Core standards. In 2014, all questions were based on the Common Core, and some educators were braced for declines.
Instead, passing rates in math went up by 0.5 to 5 percentage points across grades statewide — with fifth-graders posting the highest performance, a 64.4 percent passing rate, according to state data.
The lowest math performance was 55.6 percent in third grade. Only one grade, seventh, saw a drop in the percentage of kids passing.
In DuPage’s Glen Ellyn School District 41, 89.7 percent of fifth-graders passed the math ISAT — up from 81.3 percent the year before and the highest passing rate across all reading and math tests in the district.
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Superintendent Paul Gordon and Assistant Superintendent Karen Carlson said they were pleased, given that ISAT tests have changed dramatically in the past two years.
Carlson said the district began to revamp its curriculum three years ago to meet the Common Core standards in math. District 41 used math coaches and created small groups in class, much like reading groups, to focus on what students needed to work on.
The district typically sees higher math performance compared with reading, and that held true on the 2014 exams, Carlson said.
Mirroring statewide results, the district’s reading performance fell in all grades except seventh.
Statewide, about 55 to 59 percent of students passed the reading exams across grades, with drops ranging from 0.7 to 3.5 percentage points compared with 2013.
In Cook County’s sprawling Schaumburg School District 54, Assistant Superintendent Paul Goldberg said math gains in his district stem from teachers preparing students for tougher tests for several years. That included adding 30 minutes to math classes to help students catch up or excel.
In presenting results to its school board this month, District 54 noted that students performed “very well in 2014 taking into consideration that 100 percent of the questions were aligned to the more rigorous” Common Core state standards.
The state board of education is expected to discuss statewide test results at its meeting Wednesday, while performance at individual schools is not expected to be available to the public until Oct. 31.
ISBE spokeswoman Mary Fergus would not discuss the results provided to the Tribune by local districts, including the increase in math performance across most grades.
Fergus confirmed that there was no change in the way the tests were scored and that it is “difficult to draw too many conclusions” about one year of testing in which all questions were based on the more rigorous Common Core standards.
The new online exams this school year also will be based fully on Common Core, but they are expected to include more analysis and lengthier responses compared with the ISATs.
The results were mixed in other state exams.
Students in fourth and seventh grades also took ISAT science exams last spring, which were not revamped in the same way as the math and reading exams. The fourth-grade performance dipped to 76.3 percent of students passing, from 81 percent the year before.
In seventh grade, the passing rate increased from 79 percent in 2013 to 79.9 percent in 2014.
High school juniors took the Prairie State Achievement Examination, which is being replaced this school year by a new exam for high school students. The Prairie State also was not revamped. The percentage of students passing increased in all subjects, with the highest increase in reading.
Statewide, 56.3 percent of students passed the reading exam, compared with 54.8 percent the year before. The lowest performance was in science.
For the first time in a more than a decade, schools no longer will be judged based on how many students pass exams. The state got permission from the federal government to ditch failing labels given to schools where too many students flunked the exams and did not make what was called Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP for short.
“The punitive aspect of AYP did absolutely no good,” said Glen Ellyn District 41’s Gordon.
The state is moving to a new approach that uses a variety of factors to gauge how well schools are doing, including everything from the learning atmosphere at a school to whether freshmen are on track for high school graduation and students are prepared for college classes.
That information is published on the Illinois Report Card posted at http://www.illinoisreportcard.com.
Student test results will be in the mix of data for parents, educators and taxpayers to see.
This school year, students will be tested in new math and English Language Arts in grades three to eight, generally in the spring.
At the high school level, students will take new exams in junior-level English and algebra 2 or integrated math 3.
The state also will offer an ACT college entrance exam to high school juniors in districts that want to administer the test. It will not be mandatory, as in previous years.
Local officials say they are not clear on whether the state will require a science exam this school year. Illinois recently adopted a new set of science standards for what students need to know, but the state is not ready to do testing on those standards.
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Local officials said they were told that the state was seeking a waiver from the federal government to bypass the state science exam this school year.
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