Illinois Considers Lowering Scores Students Need to be Considered Proficient on State Exams
This article was originally published in Chalkbeat.
Illinois education officials are considering lowering the scores students need to get to be classified as proficient in a subject on a state standardized test.
They say the current benchmarks are too high and the results often don't accurately reflect whether high school students are college and career ready.
'Our system unfairly mislabels students as 'not proficient' when other data — such as success in advanced coursework and enrollment in college — tell a very different story,' state schools chief Tony Sanders wrote in a message to school leaders this week.
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The Illinois State Board of Education agreed Wednesday to move ahead with a process to change the state's testing system, though the exact details still are being worked out. That process will include creating new 'cut scores,' or the lowest score needed for a student to be sorted into broad categories of achievement on state assessments.
If approved in August, the new cut scores would be applied to the tests taken by students this spring and reported publicly in October. The changes are likely to send the public a very different message about how students are doing on reading and math tests.
Proposed changes to the state's testing system come at a time when schools in Illinois and around the country are still dealing with the academic fallout of the COVID pandemic. Other states, including Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Alaska, and New York, have made similar changes to their testing systems, according to The 74.
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Third to eighth graders in Illinois saw progress in reading last year — even exceeding proficiency levels pre-pandemic — but math scores still lagged behind past years, according to the state's 2024 report card. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, remained stagnant.
State officials acknowledged Wednesday that it would be difficult to compare proficiency rates on the October 2025 report card to previous years if the benchmarks are lowered. The move would likely result in more students across the state being considered proficient on state standardized exams. For instance, if a test has 1,000 possible points a student can score and last year a student needed to score 700 or above to be considered proficient and they scored 680, but the following year the cut score moved to 650 that student would be considered proficient.
Sanders argued, however, that changes to the state's testing system are long overdue.
In his message to school leaders this week, he said the state's current benchmarks are some of the highest in the nation. He pointed to a 2022 study by the National Center for Education Statistics that looked at how state accountability systems match up to NAEP, a national exam given periodically to a representative sample of American students in fourth and eighth grade. Illinois was among the states whose cut scores aligned with higher levels of performance on the national exam.
Sanders said in an interview with Chalkbeat that the cut scores for the college entrance exam have been higher than what the College Board, an organization that created and administers the SAT and Advanced Placement courses and exams, recommended as 'college ready' on the SAT test in previous years — and that 'it just does not make sense.'
'When we look at how actual students are performing, we have so many examples of kids who have graduated, gone on to college, and persisted and been successful in college, yet, if they made decisions in their life based on the data that we gave them, they would never have gone to college,' said Sanders.
Given that Illinois switched the high school test to the ACT, Sanders said the state board wants to ensure scores on the October 2025 report card accurately reflect where students are.
In changing the state's testing system, state officials said they are aiming for greater 'coherence' between assessments. Currently, there are different proficiency levels for the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, an exam taken by students in third to eighth grade in reading and math, the Illinois Science Assessment, taken by students in fifth, eighth, and 11th grades, and the high school college entrance exam, taken by students in 11th grade.
State officials also noted in documents from Wednesday's board meeting that the state's academic standards, or what students are expected to learn, would not change.
Jennifer Kirmes, director of policy at Advance Illinois, a nonprofit statewide advocacy organization, said that she believes there was a real call for change from school leaders, especially those teaching high school students, because some students were excelling in advanced classes but were classified as not proficient on state standardized tests.
'But in fact, those students have lots of other indicators that they are, in fact, college and career ready, which is ultimately what we're trying to measure at the high school level,' said Kirmes. 'They might have taken and passed several AP courses and exams, they might have dual credit.'
Kirmes said getting proficiency levels right matters because schools are judged based on the results of standardized exams. In Illinois, schools can be labeled as Exemplary, Commendable, Targeted, Comprehensive, and Intensive. Based on what a school is labeled can determine what resources and support they will receive from the state. Federal law requires states to provide summative designations to schools based on students' test scores since the early 2000s. Sanders also told Chalkbeat that the state is working on changing the school accountability system for 2026.
Educators, testing experts, and advocates have mixed feelings about changing the state's assessment standards. Some worry the new changes will not have any significant effect on teaching and students' learning.
Monique Redeaux-Smith, from the Illinois Federation of Teachers, one of the state's largest teacher unions, said the union is not opposed to changing the cut scores, but they are concerned about the weight placed on state standardized assessments. The tests don't provide enough information for teachers about where students might need a helping hand, she said.
'What teachers do in the classroom is more valuable because they're actually seeing students explain. They're actually seeing students show their work. They're actually able to see where students might be getting stuck in their understanding,' said Redeaux-Smith.
Paul Zavitkovsky, instructor and leadership coach at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said he doesn't think the changes will affect student learning if teachers are not given good information from the tests.
'Until we start reporting information from whatever kind of testing we do in a way that teachers, school level people look at and go, … 'This is much more useful in terms of helping me better understand what I am and am not doing well,'' said Zavitkovsky.
In response to the criticism, Sanders said in an interview with Chalkbeat that state assessments are meant to generate the state report card and show how Illinois is performing. But he agrees that state assessments 'will likely never be a useful tool to teachers to be able to improve their teaching.'
The Illinois State Board of Education is hosting listening tours around the state for school leaders, educators, parents, students, and others interested in changes to the state assessments. The next one will take place in Chicago from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on May 22 at the Chicago World Language Academy.
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
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