The Policy Shop: Chicago Public Schools’ graduation inflation
This edition of The Policy Shop comes from policy analyst Hannah Max.
The New York Times shocked many readers when it reported last week that student test scores in our public schools aren’t great.
To some of us, this was unsurprising.
Still, it’s bad.
“The math and reading performance of 13-year-olds in the United States has hit the lowest level in decades, according to test scores released today from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold-standard federal exam.”
As the Times wrote, “The last time math performance was this low for 13-year-olds was in 1990. In reading, 2004.”
Even if you aren’t a parent, even if you are a parent and your kids are grown, this story matters. Our kids aren’t all right – far too many of them can’t read and they can’t do math properly.
So how are our kids here in Illinois? Wouldn’t you know it, we have some related data fresh off the presses along the same lines: specific to Illinois.
The weird thing is if you just look at the vanity metrics many experts have flashed in our faces for years, you’d suspect everyone’s doing just fine.
Graduation rates have long been used to understand the health of a given school system.
By that standard, Illinois students are doing great. The four-year graduation rate in Illinois hit a decade high in 2022 at 87.3%.
But what good is a diploma if you get out of school without mastering the basics?
Record low proficiency despite record high graduation rates.
The final state test administered to the graduating class of 2022 was the SAT in spring 2021 during their 11th-grade academic year. On that exam, only 33% could read at grade level and 29% could perform math proficiently.
The first year Illinois implemented the SAT to measure 11th-grade student proficiency was in 2017 when almost 40% of students scored at proficiency in reading and over 36% in math. Proficiency among high school juniors has declined each year since then, resulting in the lowest percentage of students proficient in 2022 since the SAT became the standard.
We looked at Chicago, too. In February, I wrote about this same phenomenon occurring in Chicago. Nearly half of Chicago Public Schools students missed at least 18 days of school last year. Just one-fifth of high school students are reading and completing math at grade level. Yet CPS celebrated a record-high graduation rate.
COVID escalated the downward spiral of student proficiency. The pandemic and interruptions to in-person instruction appear to have seriously aggravated declines in proficiency and absenteeism in the state.
In 2019, the final full school year before the pandemic, over 36% of 11th graders met grade-level standards in reading and 34% in math. By 2022, only 30% were proficient in reading or math.
Just 17.5% of students statewide were chronically absent in the 2018-2019 school year. By the spring of 2022, about 30% were chronically absent.
Students, young and old, are being affected. Younger Illinois students are also struggling to meet grade-level standards in reading and math at higher rates than before the pandemic. In 2022, 70% of third- through eighth-grade students could not read at grade level and 75% could not perform math proficiently, compared with 62% missing grade level reading standards in 2019 and 68% in math.
Illinois students’ proficiency is hitting its lowest levels in recent school years following COVID-19 school disruptions. But even before the pandemic, proficiency among Illinois students was at unacceptable levels. The last school year in which more students were meeting proficiency standards than failing to reach grade level standards in both reading and math was in the 2013-2014 school year, the last school year before Illinois switched assessments to meet Common Core learning standards on state exams.
Now what? It’s a question we’re all asking. Some states and major cities are taking measures to fix curriculums that aren’t working. We’ll be focused on figuring out what it will take to get kids back on track.