The K-12 achievement gap in Illinois holds low-income students back

In 2023, just 35.4% of Illinois public school students were proficient in reading and 27.1% in math. For low-income students in particular, the numbers were distressingly lower. 

Ensuring quality K-12 education is an essential component of empowering low-income students. For children from low-income backgrounds, building a solid educational foundation at a young age is especially important.

A comprehensive literature review from the Urban Institute finds that “students who attend high-quality elementary and secondary schools or have significant extracurricular support are better positioned to achieve success in the workforce, college, and beyond.”

In Illinois, the disparities between students across income levels provide a clear picture of whether the state is empowering the poor through public education. Things do not look good.

On the Illinois Assessment of Readiness in 2023, half of non-low-income students demonstrated proficiency in reading, and 42% demonstrated proficiency in mathematics. For low-income students, those numbers plummeted to 21% and 13%, respectively.

That is nearly a thirty percentage point achievement gap for both math and reading, which has only grown since 2021. That’s unjust.

What these figures really indicate is that Illinois is failing to provide a quality education to children from lower-income families in the way it does for those from already well-off backgrounds, and it’s not even close. Most alarmingly, the gap between the two groups is widening.

An inadequate K-12 education has long-lasting and potentially devastating effects for the poor, who find themselves ill-equipped to enter the workforce or higher education, and therefore find it much harder to lift themselves out of poverty.

These growing disparities further perpetuate the negative feedback loop that is the poverty cycle, which is the opposite of where we should be moving.

The persistent achievement gap between low-income and non-low-income students demonstrates the need to reform public K-12 education in Illinois. This calls for improved curriculum standards, higher teacher quality and expanding school choice, particularly in areas with a high population of low-income students.