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“Illinois students are making meaningful progress across the
measures that matter the most,” State Superintendent of
Education Tony Sanders said in his announcement touting improved
student proficiency numbers.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker said last week that he increased public
education funding by $3 billion a year.
When asked by The Center Square about the correlation between
taxpayer funding of schools and student proficiency, Research
Professor Elaine Allensworth of the University of Chicago
Consortium on School Research said there is not a clear, easy
answer.
“It depends a lot on how those funds are spent,” Allensworth
said.
The 2026 report card showed statewide proficiency gains of 3% in
English language arts, from 52.4% to 55.4%, and 0.8% in math,
from 38.4% to 39.2%. Science proficiency rose from 44.6% to
48.7%.
Some lawmakers suggested last spring that the state would report
improved proficiency after changing its performance assessment
levels. The Illinois State Board of Education announced in
August 2025 it was adopting new “research-informed and
right-sized” benchmarks.
Allensworth said the old standards were set at an extremely high
level.
“So it made it seem like Illinois students were failing or that
students weren’t showing the same kinds of skills as students in
other places,” Allensworth said.
Allensworth said proficiency metrics are unstable, and there are
questions about the size of Illinois’ recent gains.
“With a number of folks pointing out that we are not seeing the
same kind of gains when we look at another assessment, which is
the National Assessment of Education Progress, there have been
questions about whether the scores are getting higher in a way
that's really not reflective of students' underlying skills,”
Allensworth said.
Sanders touted the state’s record four-year graduation rate of
89.8%.
“That probably excites me more than anything because we know
that high school graduation matters so much for students' life
outcomes,” Allensworth told The Center Square.
Illinois has added more than 12,000 teachers since 2019, even
though student enrollment dropped 10% from 2014 to 2024.
The state reported another enrollment decrease this year, from
1.85 million students in 2025 to 1.82 million in 2026.
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