Illinois students show continued struggles in reading, math on national exam
The nation’s report card was just released and shows Illinois students continue to struggle to meet proficiency standards in reading and math. State leaders are spinning 8th-grade results as a win, but in reality, they lag. Ignored are the struggles of younger students.
“The news is not good.”
That’s how Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, described the release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress results outlining academic progress of the nation’s students in 2024. Every two years, the assessment tracks the nation’s fourth and eighth graders’ proficiency in reading and math, and it is the largest nationally representative assessment of student progress.
“Student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, reading scores continue to decline and our lowest-performing students are reading at historically low levels,” Carr said.
The news is particularly bad in Illinois, especially in reading. Average reading and math scores dropped for Illinois fourth graders on the national assessment – a critical juncture when students’ ability to learn all subjects depends on how well they are learning to read. The average scores for Illinois eighth graders remained nearly the same in reading and increased in math, but continued to trail pre-pandemic math scores.
Yet somehow, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois education leaders managed to celebrate the news.
“The 2024 Nation’s Report Card shows our 8th graders outperforming the national average in both math and reading, a testament to the great strides Illinois students are making academically,” Pritzker said in a press release from the Illinois State Board of Education on Jan. 29.
Celebrating Illinois eighth graders outperforming the national average is a low bar. Doing better than bad is not good.
Nationally, 70% of eighth graders did not meet NAEP’s proficiency standards in reading. In math, 73% of students were not proficient. Just as bad is Illinois’ fourth graders matching the national average in reading and failing to outperform it in math, meaning 70% didn’t meet NAEP’s proficiency standards in reading and 62% in math.
Rather than celebrating students for matching or outperforming the low bar which was set by the nation’s poor performance on the national assessment, Illinois should seek ways to better prepare students to succeed in school and be prepared for life beyond graduation.
That’s especially important for Illinois’ lower elementary students. Research shows they must build a firm foundation of literacy skills to become strong readers so they can develop into strong learners. Students who fall behind in reading skills, especially in lower elementary grade levels, drop out at much higher rates than their classmates. A student’s likelihood to graduate high school can be predicted by their reading skill at the end of third grade, when they move from learning to read, to reading to learn.
Illinois students have yet to show meaningful progress in reading and math. Here’s a closer look at how Illinois students performed on the Nation’s Report Card in 2024.
Illinois fourth-grade reading proficiency drops
Not even 1 in 3 fourth graders read at proficiency level in Illinois.
Only 30% of Illinois fourth graders met NAEP proficiency standards in reading. That marks a drop of nearly 3 percentage points since the previous national assessment in 2022, and a nearly four-point change since the last national assessment before the pandemic-era school closures.
Illinois fourth graders were proficient in reading at a lower rate than the national percentage. Illinois dropped from a rank of 16th on the previous assessment to 29th in the nation for the percentage of fourth graders at or above NAEP proficiency standards in 2024. In the Midwest, five states ranked above Illinois.
Fourth graders show slight improvement in math proficiency to return to 2019 levels
The Illinois fourth grade math proficiency rate increased by half of a percentage point from 37.5% in 2022 to 38.1% in 2024. Yet Illinois is 1 of only 4 states whose fourth-grade math proficiency rate has not improved since the pre-pandemic assessment in 2019.
Illinois’ 38% math proficiency rate for fourth graders ranks 30th in the nation, slightly below the national rate at over 39%. Only two Midwestern states performed worse than Illinois in 2024: Michigan and Missouri.
Eighth-grade reading proficiency remains nearly unchanged from 2022
Just 1 in 3 Illinois eighth graders were at or above NAEP proficiency levels in reading on the 2024 assessment, up less than 1 percentage point from the previous assessment in 2022. Eighth graders have failed to recover to the pre-pandemic reading proficiency rate, with the 2024 assessment marking a 2 percentage point drop from 2019.
Despite only one-third of eighth graders being proficient in reading, Illinois ranks 7th in the nation – which underscores Carr’s comments that the entirety of the NAEP results were not good news. Illinois had the second highest eighth-grade reading proficiency rate in the Midwest, only slightly trailing Indiana. Illinois recorded a higher proficiency rate than the nation.
Pandemic recovery eludes eighth graders, but they make significant improvement in math
In 2024, 32.3% of Illinois eighth graders were at or above the NAEP proficiency standards in math. Illinois eighth graders recorded the second-highest improvement in math proficiency from 2022 to 2024 with a nearly 6 percentage point increase. They only trailed North Carolina, which had an over 6-point jump. Despite the large two-year increase, the 2024 math proficiency rate still trails the pre-pandemic proficiency rate from 2019 by nearly 1.5 percentage points.
Illinois’ eighth-grade math proficiency rate ranked 9th in the nation in 2024 and above the national rate of nearly 27%. Four Midwestern states outperformed Illinois’ math proficiency rate: Wisconsin at 37%, Minnesota at 34%, South Dakota at 33% and Nebraska at just below 33%.
Illinois must invest in better educational outcomes for students
The Nation’s Report Card reveals what many already know: more must be done to support the academic progress of the nation’s students. In its press release announcing the data, NCES said, “The Nation’s Report Card shows that the nation’s fourth and eighth graders are not making the level of progress needed to regain ground lost during the pandemic, although there are some signs of progress.”
The new data should motivate Illinois lawmakers and school leaders to explore ways to help get even more students back on track to succeed in the core subjects of reading and math. It is especially important for Illinois’ lower elementary students, who need to have mastered foundational skills in reading to learn in future school years.
There is no mystery as to how Illinois can better prepare its students to succeed in school and life. Reading skills in early grades are critical, and Illinois has both the model and power to boost literacy in those early years.