‘Progress, not just achievement’: State emphasizes growth over proficiency in new Illinois Report Card data

Illinois students are showing continued growth especially in English language arts and mathematics, outpacing pre-pandemic levels, according to 2025 Illinois School Report Card data released Thursday.

The annual school report card also shows a narrowing of graduation rate gaps between student groups, chronic absenteeism declining for the third year in a row since its peak in 2022, and more high school students enrolled in advanced coursework.

State education officials emphasized student growth percentile as a better measure of how students are meeting learning standards than focusing on proficiency scores alone.

On average, Illinois students grew at a faster rate in the 2024-25 school year than in 2018-19 on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness administered to third- through eighth-graders.

The 2025 report card includes two measurements of growth: at the cohort level, which compares students within the same grade from year to year; and baseline, which compares today’s students to their peers from the 2019 academic year to show whether they are learning faster than before the pandemic.

ELA growth was 8 percentage points higher than the 2018-19 baseline of 50%. Illinois State Board of Education officials credit the trends to educators implementing best practices in literacy through the Illinois Comprehensive Literacy Plan.

Growth in mathematics has been slower, though it continues to exceed pre-pandemic levels. The statewide mean student growth percentile for math is at 52%.

That six-year upward growth trend bears out at several suburban school districts, including Elgin Area School District U-46, where the growth percentile was 63.4% for ELA and 52.1% for math.

U-46, the state’s second-largest district, exceeded the 50% growth percentile for ELA in fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth and 11th grades, and similarly for math, in fifth, sixth and 10th grades, said David Bell, U-46’s coordinator of assessment and accountability.

“Any school or any grade level that’s growing more than 50 means that those students … are growing more than the average student in the state for that grade or school,” Bell said. “We do have some schools that had much larger growth numbers.”

For example, Prairieview Elementary School in Bartlett earned an exemplary status in this year’s report card, scoring a 61% student growth percentile in ELA and 56% in math, Bell said.

Students in some districts already have made up for the learning loss caused by the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic that closed schools statewide in March 2020 and forced remote e-learning.

“Our growth has increasingly improved over the years, and we actually recouped our pre-pandemic proficiency years ago,” said Angela Stallion, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for Lake Zurich Community Unit District 95. “We actually see an increased growth in mathematics in our district … we have seen growth across all grade levels and subgroups in our mathematics.”

The district’s growth percentile is 67.6% in ELA and 70% in math compared with the 2019 baseline, report card data show.

“We've spent the last three years working on curriculum and working on aligning assessments and rigor to our proficiency standards. … Additionally, we have developed a partnership with Loyola University, who came in and helped us to identify where we are achieving great success in math instruction across K-12 and where we have opportunities for growth,” Stallion said.

For any district, achieving a growth score above 60% would be considered “remarkable,” said Patrick Nolten, assistant superintendent for assessment and accountability at Naperville Community Unit District 203.

The district’s growth percentile is 66.4% in ELA and 61.5% in math, report card data shows.

Proficiency vs. growth

When looking at student learning, proficiency and growth, each tell an important part of the story, officials say.

Proficiency shows what a student knows and can do at a single point in time. It’s a snapshot of performance measured against the state’s learning standards. Growth shows how much a student has learned in comparison with peers who started at the same level.

“This shows progress, not just achievement, and it highlights how much learning is happening for every student,” State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders said. “Growth helps us understand whether students are catching up, keeping pace or excelling over time.”

“Together, proficiency and growth provide a more complete picture,” he added. “Proficiency tells us where students are, growth tells us how far they’ve come and how quickly they’re moving forward. Both measures are essential for understanding school performance and guiding improvement.”

New proficiency benchmarks

In August, the state education board adopted new performance levels and proficiency benchmarks for state assessments to give students, families, and educators better data on academic achievement and college readiness. The new proficiency benchmarks align the ACT college entrance exam, Illinois Assessment of Readiness and Illinois Science Assessment to real expectations for college and career readiness.

While the goal is for more students to meet proficiency by lowering cut scores, state officials stress these updated standards don’t lower the bar. They say it more accurately capture students’ full spectrum of skills and acknowledges their growth.

“Illinois’ previous benchmarks for English language arts proficiency were the most restrictive in the country, resulting in the mislabeling of high-achieving, college-ready students as being not proficient,” Sanders said.

Previously, each state assessment had a different number of performance levels with different scoring thresholds. The new proficiency benchmarks are based on real placement and success data from Illinois colleges and universities and align directly with ACT and college readiness expectations, Sanders said.

“While the definition of proficient has changed, this change does not affect students raw scale scores or the calculation of student growth percentiles,” Sanders added. “This means that we still have the ability to compare performance year over year. Illinois Learning Standards remain the exact same as they did last year and the year before. What we expect students to know and be able to do remain the same today as they did last year.”

Overall, proficiency rates in 2025 generally are higher in English language arts and math and lower in science due to these changes, report card data show.

As a result, the 2025 proficiency rates seen in the report card set a new baseline for measuring progress and cannot be compared with previous years, officials said.

“ELA continues to outpace math, highlighting the need for targeted math supports,” Sanders said.

ISBE now is collaborating with educators and partners to develop a Comprehensive Statewide Numeracy Plan — modeled after the literacy plan — to provide evidence-based guidance for strengthening math instruction and closing learning gaps.

High school growth/graduation rates

New in this year’s report card is student growth results for ninth, 10th and 11th grades — 2025 will serve as a baseline year for measuring future growth in high school. That’s in addition to the typical measures of ninth grade on track and ACT scores that help assess college readiness.

“It allows us to really look at students’ progress … where before there really was like an ending point at eighth grade for growth,” U-46’s Bell said. “Now, it does give a more connected picture of growth throughout high school.”

He noted Bartlett High School scored 57.8% in ELA growth and 53.1% in math — the highest among the five U-46 high schools.

Josh Schumacher, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for Palatine-Schaumburg Township High School District 211, says the new high school growth scores allow districts to take “a more individualized approach” to gauge “how many of our students are growing at the rate that is expected of them year over year.”

Four of the district’s five high schools scored above 50% in ELA growth and all five scored above 55% in math.

Illinois’ four-year graduation rate also reached a 15-year high at 89% — a 6.2% increase from 2024.

“The planned aim was an 88.9% graduation rate by 2029 and we’ve reached that milestone in 2025,” Sanders said. “The gains we’re seeing have been driven by improvements among our Black, Latino and multiracial students.”

Students of two or more races, Black students and students with Individualized Education Programs charted the largest gains at 3.5%, 2.7%, and 4.3%, respectively.

The measure of ninth graders on track to graduate — students having earned at least five full-year course credits and no more than one semester F in a core course at the end of ninth grade — still is the best predictor of future graduate rates, officials said.

In 2025, 89.3% of Illinois’ ninth graders finished the school year on track to graduate — a 1.3% increase over 2024 and an 8.6% increase since 2021. The largest year-over-year gains were among English learners (3.5%), Black students (2.3%), and Hispanic students (1.8%), data shows.

“With the addition of high school growth measures, we can now look beyond graduation to see how students are growing academically throughout high school, encouraging schools to support continuous learning and improvement, not just graduation alone,” Sanders said.

To check out your school’s or district’s results in the 2025 Illinois Report Card, visit lllinoisReportCard.com.