More Illinois schools fail to meet No Child Left Behind goals

Roughly one-third of all Illinois public schools failed to meet No Child Left Behind testing standards this year, state education officials announced Tuesday.

Test results show that 1,196 schools, or 31 percent, fell short of NCLB standards, while 2,607 schools met them. Last year, 24 percent of Illinois schools fell short. This is the second time since NCLB went into effect that the number of failing schools has increased.

On the positive side, 35 schools and 11 districts performed well enough this year to get off the "improvement" list, which includes schools and districts that previously fell short of NCLB standards two years in a row. Two of these schools are in Elgin Area School District U-46: Abbott Middle School and Tefft Middle School.

An additional 101 schools and 23 districts on the improvement list performed well enough to avoid further penalties.

"That's really critical," said Joyce Karon, an Illinois State Board of Education member from Barrington. "To see those schools reversing the trend when standards keep getting tougher, that's the kind of progress we have to replicate."

The increased number of failing schools reflects NCLB's tougher performance requirements, state officials said. This year, 62.5 percent of each school's students had to perform at grade level in reading and math in order for the school to make what NCLB refers to as "adequate yearly progress." Last year, the passing threshold was 55 percent.

"I can't say that it's surprising, when you have the increasingly higher hurdles that schools have to overcome," Karon said. "But it's disappointing."

Another factor that contributed to this year's scores was the new requirement that students not proficient in English must take the same standardized tests as their English-speaking classmates. Sixty-six schools failed to make AYP because of the performance of this group of students, test results show.

The state has already released full testing data to individual school districts, and some of those have started sharing the information with their communities. The state will release full test results for all Illinois public schools on Oct. 31.

The scores are based on tests given in March and April. Students in grade 3 through grade 8 take the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, while students in grade 11 take the Prairie State Achievement Exam. NCLB uses only the math and reading scores from those tests.

The federal law, which went into effect in 2002, outlines a series of penalties for failing schools that grow more severe over time and can end in a forced restructuring.

NCLB will only get tougher in the coming years. The AYP threshold jumps to 70 percent in 2009, then 77.5 percent the year after that. The ultimate goal is that 100 percent of students perform at grade level in 2014.