More data is gradually being added to the Illinois State Report Card, but local school officials are saying there is more to the story than just these numbers alone. 

The state uses two assessments to evaluate if schools meet state learning standards: grades 3-8 take the Illinois Assessment of Readiness while high school juniors take the SAT. According to preliminary spring testing IAR and SAT data, approximately 17 percent fewer students met English language arts standards in 2021 than in 2019, and the state saw a nearly 18 percent drop in students who met math standards this year compared to 2019. 

When comparing 2021 data to that from 2019, Columbia’s 2021 IAR data reflects a 16 percent decrease in number of students meeting state standards for ELA proficiency (referring to the percent who met or exceeded these standards) and a 19 percent decrease in math proficiency. Its SAT data shows a 2 percent decrease in ELA proficiency and an 11 percent drop in math. 

Waterloo’s IAR data shows a 16 percent decrease in number of students meeting state standards for ELA proficiency and a 19 percent decrease in math compared to 2019 figures. The district’s SAT data shows a 10 percent decrease in ELA proficiency from 2019 and a 10 percent drop in math. 

These numbers are approximate. 

While some of these declines look stark and may spark worry, both districts maintain the data alone does not represent the schools’ full academic landscapes. 

Waterloo Curriculum Coordinator John Schmieg said he noticed a pattern in the data: schools like Waterloo that typically yield higher test scores saw more significant drops in 2021 data (representative of the 2020-21 academic year) than those that do not field high averages. 

He attributed this to factors such as the substitute shortage, which limited time teachers had to discuss and respond to data, and programs such as tutoring being reduced or eliminated during the pandemic. 

“Some of the supports for students were not there and some of the collaboration time and decision making just wasn’t there,” Schmieg said. “Last year we were trying lots of new things and we had to be quick learners in the fall on technology and things like that – which we were successful at – but other things could not take place because all of that was going on.” 

Students having schedules with some amount of, if not entirely, remote learning also could have shaped the data. 

“Last year, the district was back and forth between in-person, fully remote and hybrid, so when it came time for that one-time, one snapshot assessment with the IAR, we had some students that were remote that we were trying to figure out how to get them in (school) to take it, we had some students that were having technology issues, because we were trying to administer it in various ways,” Columbia Assistant Superintendent Alyssa Smith said. 

Smith added that recent local assessments are given more credence than the School Report Card data.

Because all schools had different pandemic-responses, local leaders have come to the consensus that the newly-released School Report Card cannot accurately compare schools. 

“It’s just so complicated to compare because the playing field is different for different schools based on whether or not they were able to have in-person instruction, what percentage of their students participated in in-person instruction verses remote last year, (when) they took (the) test,” Waterloo School Superintendent Brian Charron said.

As Charron alluded to, districts were given an option of when to take the 2021 IAR test. While Schmieg said he cannot recall a district in Monroe County that did not choose to take the test in the spring – when they are usually distributed – some districts across the state elected to test in the fall. 

Additionally, the test was not taken in 2020, presenting a large gap in data. 

In part because not all necessary data was available, Schmieg said the Illinois State Board of Education is not releasing 2021 Summative Designations. 

ISBE’s website states the four rankings – Exemplary, Commendable, Targeted and Comprehensive – “help families and communities understand how well schools are serving all students” and “multiple measures of school performance and growth determine a school’s designation.” 

Since rankings were not calculated last year either, schools currently have their 2019 designations. For Waterloo, these are Commendable for W.J. Zahnow Elementary, Gardner Elementary and Waterloo High School and Exemplary for Waterloo Junior High School. Columbia received Exemplary rankings for all of its schools with the exception of Columbia Middle School, which received a Commendable designation. 

Smith said Columbia has incorporated how it is working to move CMS status to Exemplary in its school improvement plan.

“We are putting in as many things as we can to make sure that that designation changes when they do go back to recalculating those and I will say that at this point, we firmly believe that we have addressed the issues that gave us that initial rating a few years ago,” she said.

In a normal year, districts receive an in-depth breakdown of IAR scores in the summer. Schmieg said this timetable allows a district to review the data and make changes as needed to the curriculum by the school year’s start. 

As of press time, Waterloo and Columbia have not received such data. 

“We will get some reports here, hopefully in the next couple of weeks, that will show how our students did on each standard that was tested,” Schmieg said, stating the generalized data above makes it difficult to base decisions on. 

Because they have not received this data for 2021, this puts districts across Illinois in a game of catch-up. 

“If the curriculum has already been taught in the fall, we’ll have to decide what we have to go back and re-teach because these standards were low on some of the results,” Schmieg said. 

Local districts are leaning more heavily on local assessments to determine how the pandemic is impacting their students. 

Waterloo uses AIMSweb to evaluate kindergarten through eighth graders’ reading and math skills, occasionally testing some high school students as necessary. 

Columbia tests students in kindergarten through second grade using AIMSweb and uses NWEA Map for those in grades 3-8. 

As Smith explained, both the AIMSWeb and NWEA Map test are taken three times throughout the year. This has proved to be especially important during pandemic times. 

“Those are done three times throughout the year and give us a better snapshot of what the students were going through and we could also make those (learning and curriculum) adjustments,” Smith said. “For students that just returned from being a hybrid or remote learning for a while, we can give them that chance to transition back to that school mentality of the traditional sense before we ask them to take the assessments that we are using this year.” 

There are other advantages to having interim assessments, or those taken multiple times a year, Trenton Goble, vice president of K-12 Product Strategy at Instructure, a learning management system which also provides interim testing to teachers and districts alike. 

 “The big challenge we always had with end-of-level assessment was the data came after the school year was over. As a teacher, you have this data on students who are no longer in your class anymore,” Gobel explained. “There’s value in kind of making a determination of how a school is doing overall, but in terms of being able to use data from those assessments to actually impact students in a positive way, you certainly have more opportunity to do that if you’re assessing in an interim fashion.”

In looking at pandemic-related local data available at this time, Smith said Columbia is seeing a smaller drop in math scores than in reading.

Smith said she has noticed younger learners are having more problems with state learning standards that test decoding skills, while those in second and third grade are more often struggling with inferential skills. 

“We are really identifying what (state standards) are more of the important and foundational ones, those standards that will continue to evolve if you look at the scope and sequence of how to teach reading or how to teach math,” Smith said. “We are making sure that our students are getting extra support, extra practice and even extension activities in those areas so that we can make sure that in going into their next grade level … they’re not continuing to struggle in those deficit areas.” 

Schmieg said Waterloo has also used local testing to locate and attempt to rectify learning delays, also noting that local assessment data “looks as it should,” in that it does not suggest significant gaps for most students. 

ESSER funds have been allocated to address these concerns through a “more robust” summer school and hiring additional support staff. 

“Our local data looks almost identical to what it does almost every year, meaning our kids are scoring where they should be,” Schmieg said. “We noticed before school started and early in the summer that there were some students that were scoring lower than usual, and we did hire another reading teacher in the lower grades … to assist with some of those kids that were performing below grade level in reading.” 

Unlike IAR’s data, districts currently have detailed spring 2021 SAT data, which includes a question-by-question breakdown. 

Schmieg and Smith said both of their districts are currently sorting through this report, coming up with potential curriculum adjustments along the way. 

Smith said so far, Columbia counselors have set one central goal: for students to score a 1090 average on next year’s SAT. The district’s 2021 data reflected a 1040 average, and increase from 2019’s 1021 average. 

Smith said Columbia is finding creative ways to strengthen these scores. 

“(We are) trying to find out how we can (tailor) our science and social studies courses to help support the English portion of the assessment,” Smith said. “Our teachers are really going through the question analysis report that we get from SAT and … we’re doing some training with the science and the social studies teachers to understand what the questions are like so that they can start incorporating some of those into their classroom assessment.” 

As Chalkbeat Chicago previously reported, ISBE may begin its own form of interim assessments by the 2023-24 school year. Because its contract with Pearson, the company that supplies the IAR, does not end until 2025, some districts will take both exams until the contract expires, Chalkbeat explained. 

Gobel said a common rationale for states to switch to interim from end-of-year assessment is to ensure teachers can make the best use of the data as mentioned above. Yet, he said it is important that in the process of switching, the testing does not repeat a common mistake: creating a high-stress environment. 

He warned in addition to upsetting students, this might also negatively impact students’ scores. 

“You’re moving from one assessment at the end of the year to three because ultimately there’s greater value in making that data available to teachers and if people still hang onto this mind set that the goal of those three times a year assessments is to everybody accountable, to compare district-to-district, school-to-school, teacher-to-teacher, you’re going to create the same kind of stress and anxiety and perhaps bad practices that we sometimes see when we create high-stakes assessments,” Gobel said. “The goal is to really lower the stakes and put the emphasis on student learning.” 

Not everybody is a fan of the proposed change. As Chalkbeat reported, some opposition fears testing multiple times a year could be an “overreach,” particularly harming districts with low-income students and students of color. 

The change would also be costly, with Chalkbeat noting testing three times a year would cost $228 million “over the next decade.” According to the article, 37 state legislators submitted a letter stating ISBE has not considered the full impact of expanding the testing to include kindergarten through second grade, which the current plan said is a possibility.

This letter came in time for ISBE’s December meeting, which took place earlier this month. As of the day before the meeting, Chalkbeat said, the proposal was not on its agenda.