Almost a decade ago, No Child Left Behind was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and with that change, Illinois overhauled its school accountability system. Instead of judging schools on how many kids passed a standardized test, we moved to look at many other ingredients of school quality. (Here’s a throwback to our cake video from that era!) 

11/10/25 UPDATE: And here’s a stir fry video about our current situation. It’s less polished than the cake, but still fairly satisfying. So if you prefer to learn about school accountability systems via 2-minute recipe videos instead of blogs or PowerPoints, jump right to the video. 

Now, Illinois is doing another overhaul – and based on the proposal we saw for the first time last week, there’s plenty of opportunity for improvement. NOW is our chance to weigh in! This is moving fast – your next chance to attend a listening session is TOMORROW.

11/10/25 UPDATE: The last in-person session is 11/14 in O’Fallon. We’ll be there!

11/13/25 UPDATE: Three virtual listening sessions were just announced! Sign up for one here.

You can read ISBE’s plan here, but here’s my summary: 

The current system ranks 10% of schools in the top rating category, which leaves schools complaining about changing goalposts and unsure what they need to achieve to get there (since it depends entirely on how they perform relative to everyone else). Now, ISBE proposes clearer criteria for schools to strive for, rather than competing against each other for the top ranking.  

Schools are currently categorized as Exemplary, Commendable, Comprehensive, and Intensive – with the vast majority fitting into the extremely broad “Commendable” category. The new labels would break up the overabundance of Commendables to give more clarity in the summative label, now Exemplary, Commendable, Approaching, Developing, and Comprehensive.  

Though we have concerns with some omitted indicators, we appreciate the continued focus on academic growth and reducing chronic absenteeism. The system would be based on three “core indicators” for high schools (proficiency, growth, and graduation rate) and two for elementary (proficiency and growth), with three “elevating indicators” (English Learner growth, consistent attendance rate, and climate survey participation). The proposal aims to celebrate successes more than penalize shortfalls, so instead of using the usual “chronic absenteeism” (missing more than 10% of school days) metric, the new system would use the inverse: “consistent attendance” (attending more than 90% of school days).  

The proposal scraps other measures related to high school success in favor of just looking at graduation rates. The current system includes more robust indicators assessing students’ readiness for graduation, post-secondary education, and career. Freshman-on-track is an incredibly powerful metric, with strong research originating from the Consortium for Chicago School Research showing that students who were ‘on-track’ in 9^th grade were four times more likely to graduate. Chicago was the home of this measure, with a strong focus on freshman-on-track rates driving a large part of CPS’s huge rise in graduation rates over the last 25 years. The College and Career Readiness Indicator, which was never fully implemented despite the eight years it has been part of the plan, outlines four paths for students to demonstrate their readiness for college and career, including combinations of things like grades, attendance, employment, earning a credential, and taking early college courses. Even without the College and Career Readiness Indicators in place, Illinois collects plenty of valuable data that could round out this measure, like career pathway completion, seal of biliteracy, and dual credit completion. Taking the focus away from these evidence-based strategies would be a step backwards. 

• RECOMMENDATION #1: Change the Graduation Rate measure to a more comprehensive composite score that includes growth in graduation rate, freshman-on-track rate, career pathway completers, students earning early college credit, and seal of biliteracy rates. 

The “consistent attendance” (i.e., inverse of chronic absenteeism) metric sorts schools into categories based on whether they hit certain attendance benchmarks. For example, if over 85% of high school students are consistent attendees, the school is ‘Exemplary.’ If 70% – 85% are consistent attendees, the school is ‘Commendable.’ (Keep in mind here that 70% is five points lower than state average.) If fewer than 40% of students are consistent attendees, the school is ‘Comprehensive.’ But if a school grows its consistent attendance rate from 70% to 80%, the system does not recognize that.  

• RECOMMENDATION #2: Modify the ‘Consistent Attendance’ metric to allow high growth schools to qualify as exemplary and commendable, while also requiring schools to at least reach the state average attendance rate to qualify as ‘Commendable’ through the rate alone. 

11/10/25 UPDATE: While we wish Illinois were in a position to measure more than participation rates on the climate surveys, we’ve heard feedback that this is not realistic because some schools use a different survey, so the metric wouldn’t be comparable across all schools. There are also well-respected friends who continue to make the case that participation is the way to go so that there is no gaming of the survey results. Therefore, we are not focusing on this third recommendation.  

Every school is required to administer a survey of learning conditions each year. During the last round, there was a lot of discussion about how to use this valuable data in the accountability system. They landed on measuring only the participation rate. This proposal has not evolved to consider growth in some of the metrics themselves; the new proposal would still measure participation rates only. 

• RECOMMENDATION #3: As the new proposal is structured, the climate survey can only elevate a school’s total designation – not penalize it. So this seems like a great opportunity to consider growth in several of the survey result areas (like the student-teacher trust, ambitious instruction, and student safety responses), rather than just participation rate.

The accountability system is one of the most powerful levers in the state to incentivize growth, identify schools that need more support, and direct resources strategically toward improvement. It is important that Illinois get this right. If you can make it to a listening session, please sign up for one here. If you can’t, but you have feedback, we’d love to hear it!