State board of education recommends lowering student proficiency standards
Illinois students are struggling to meet proficiency standards on state assessments. Instead of working to improve student learning, the state wants to lower standards to hide the crisis.
Illinois students are struggling and the state ought to invest in improving their mastery of reading and mathematics. Instead, Illinois State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders wants to lower proficiency benchmarks on state assessments.
State data shows only 41% of students in third through eighth grade could read at grade level in 2024 and just 31% in 11th grade. In math, 28% of third through eighth graders were proficient and 26% of 11th graders.
Sanders said his plan will “right-size our benchmarks for proficiency on state assessments to provide us with more accurate data about student performance.”
Lowering proficiency benchmarks will inflate the percentage of students meeting proficiency standards, but it does little to improve students’ performance or their actual mastery of subject matter. Rather than providing a more accurate view of student performance, it simply obscures the crisis of students struggling to meet proficiency in core subjects and likely denies students the extra help they need.
Illinois proposes lowering proficiency benchmarks to more closely align to nation
The National Assessment of Educational Progress measures student achievement in reading and math for fourth and eighth grade students every two years. In Illinois, 30% of fourth graders met NAEP proficiency standards in 2024 and 33% of eighth graders. In math, 38% of Illinois fourth graders met NAEP’s math proficiency standards and 32% of eighth graders.
Illinois students matched or outperformed the national average proficiency level in reading for fourth and eighth grade and slightly underperformed and outperformed the national average in math for both grades.
But matching or outperforming the national average is a low bar for students. Even as Illinois students outperform the national average on some NAEP assessments, most Illinois students do not meet NAEP’s proficiency benchmarks.
Yet Sanders and the state board of education are proposing reforms to the way Illinois determines student achievement, focusing more on comparing its standards to other state standards than to how Illinois students perform when compared to students from other states. Specifically, Sanders and the board recommend lowering the proficiency benchmarks – or the cut scores needed to reach proficiency – for students rather than investing in measures to increase the percentage of students meeting current standards.
Proponents of lowering proficiency benchmarks point to data showing Illinois has among the highest proficiency benchmarks in the nation, according to the 2022 State Standards Mapping Study conducted by NAEP.
According to the most recent 2022 mapping study which compares achievement standards on state assessments to NAEP achievement standards, Illinois had the fourth-highest proficiency standards among all 50 states and Puerto Rico for fourth grade reading, highest for fourth grade math, second highest for eighth grade reading and third highest for eighth grade math. Sanders and other Illinois education leaders view this as reason to lower benchmarks in Illinois.
But in the “frequently asked questions” section of NAEP state standards mapping, the authors note, “This report is a comparison of performance standards, not of student achievement. NAEP achievement scores of states’ student populations would be a better measure to compare achievement across states than where states set their bar for proficiency.”
In other words, the study showed Illinois has higher benchmarks than other states. But student performance on the NAEP does not show Illinois students have higher performance than other states.
How Illinois’ standards compare to other states should matter less than how Illinois students perform on the standardized Nation’s Report Card compared to other states. While Illinois may rank in the top four for its proficiency standards on state assessments, Illinois students, especially elementary students, do not rank as highly in proficiency achievement compared to other states.
When compared to other states, Illinois ranked 29th in the nation for the overall average fourth-grade reading score and 33rd for fourth-grade math. Eighth-grade Illinoisans performed better ranking 7th in reading and 16th in math.
Illinois education leaders have already called for lowered standards
This isn’t the first time Illinois education leaders have called for lowered proficiency standards for Illinois students.
Eight Illinois education organizations released a vision for Illinois public education in November 2024. The Vision 2030 report recommended lowering the proficiency benchmarks for students rather than investing in measures to increase the percentage of students meeting current standards.
The organizations authoring the report argue this change would align proficiency benchmarks to national distributions. This doesn’t mean aligning Illinois’ state proficiency benchmarks to the NAEP’s proficiency benchmarks, but rather to lower Illinois’ benchmarks because some Illinois students outperform the national average on the NAEP.
Outperforming the national average is a low bar for students. Even as Illinois students outperform the national average on the NAEP, most Illinois students do not meet NAEP’s proficiency benchmarks.
Illinois’ outperformance of the national average still meant only 1 in 3 eighth-grade students met NAEP proficiency standards in reading. The story is similar for math proficiency rates.
Unintended harms by lowered proficiency benchmarks
It is not in students’ best interests to lower assessment standards so more students can meet proficiency benchmarks, especially in the wake of pandemic-era proficiency declines.
While Sanders and other education leaders claim the efforts to lower proficiency benchmarks would create a “better roadmap” and would help schools “best support [students] on their journey to success,” researchers warn it misleads parents.
“Many parents are already underestimating the degree to which their children are lagging behind,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard researcher who has been tracking students’ recovery from COVID learning losses. “Lowering the proficiency cuts now will mislead them further.”
Lowering the proficiency benchmarks threatens to not only mislead parents but also to leave some students without the academic support they need. Schools use proficiency benchmarks to determine if students need extra help, said Christy Hovanetz, a senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd. Lowering the bar means some students won’t receive the help they need.
Calling to lower proficiency standards distracts from bigger issues
Proficiency and other academic outcome statistics paint a bleak picture for many Illinois students, particularly those who are minorities or low-income
The plan to lower proficiency standards will be presented to the state board of education for discussion at the Aug. 16 meeting. If approved, the new benchmarks will be applied to the spring 2025 assessments with results published in October 2025.
Rather than lowering expectations for students, Illinois ought to invest in efforts to increase student mastery of core subjects and help more students achieve the proficiency benchmarks currently in place.