Illinois’ educational establishment has been doing it for more than five decades. Year after year they’ve automatically advanced kids that can’t read or do math at grade level. They’ve graduated kids that are nowhere near proficiency levels on the SAT. And they always tell parents all is well.
They just did it again this month when the State Board of Education and Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the new state 2024 education results. This time to give the illusion of success, they conflated record graduation rates with improved elementary scores. Gov. Pritzker told parents: “This year’s report card shows we’ve reached the highest grad rate in 14 years at 87.7% AND the highest-ever proficiency rate in English Language Arts in grades 3-8.”
Tricky. When bragging about record graduation rates, it’s not elementary scores but rather high school SAT scores that matter. And those SAT scores are at or near all-time lows. Student reading proficiency statewide is down nearly 9 percentage points and math is down by over 10 points compared to 2017 when Illinois began using the SAT.
Note that the scores on the SAT – a requirement for all juniors in Illinois – were trending down even before the pandemic began.
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Taxpayer Funded Wisconsin DPI: “There is major score inflation”
