From ISBE's 2013 School Report Card page
CHICAGO - As Illinois schools plunge headfirst into the national Common Core Curriculum standards, test scores for 2013 showed a dramatic drop for elementary age public school students. Chicago Tribune reports:
The Illinois State Board of Education raised the standards by which it assesses student performance to match those laid out in the Common Core State Standards Initiative. As a result, a school's 2013 ISAT composite scores may appear to have dropped considerably even in cases where student achievement has not changed. More information about the change is available on ISBE's website.
Illinois' previous testing standards are being abandoned for the new federal Common Core curriculum standards.
ISBE has announced that it plans to abandon the ISAT in favor of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments in the 2014-2015 school year.
In reviewing this year's test scores, the Chicago Tribune found these points to note for 2013:
- The percentage of third- through eighth-grade students who passed their ISAT reading and math exams fell by about 24 points.
- The approximately 270 schools with the smallest declines, 12 percentage points or less, had lower percentages of poor and minority students as a group than average. Illinois' school population is 50.6 percent white and 49.9 percent low-income.
- Schools with less than a 1 percentage point drop in passing rates were all Chicago schools that have high poverty rates but teach advanced students.
- More than 700 schools with the largest declines in scores, 30 to almost 60 percentage point drops in passing rates, as a whole had higher percentages of low-income and minority students than the state average.
More on the 2013 test scores and how to find how your children's schools fared HERE.
