State education board to vote on new test scoring system
[August 13, 2025]
By Peter Hancock
SPRINGFIELD – Education officials in Illinois expect to see a marked
increase this year in the percentage of students classified as
proficient in reading, writing and math, along with a slight decline in
proficiency rates in science.
That’s not because of any change in the way schools are teaching or how
well students are learning, but rather a change in the way the state
reports scores on the annual assessments students are given in those
core subjects.
During a media briefing Tuesday, State Superintendent of Education Tony
Sanders said the new scoring system has been in development for about 18
months. Pending final approval by the State Board of Education, which is
scheduled to vote Wednesday, the new grading system will be used in the
2025 report card that is due to be released this fall and will reflect
scores from the tests students took this spring.
For years, those scores have been reported on the annual Illinois Report
Card, which tells the public how students are performing overall, and
which groups of students are falling behind. The scores are also used to
hold schools accountable for improving student performance and bringing
all demographic groups, including the most disadvantaged, up to
proficiency.
But state officials have also complained for years that the way scores
have been reported – and especially how scores are categorized as above
or below the proficiency level – do not accurately reflect how well
students are doing.
For example, recent report cards have shown that about two-thirds of
Illinois high school graduates go on to enroll in a two- or four-year
college within 12 months of graduation. But scores from the state
assessments given each spring show fewer than half of them perform at
grade level in English language arts, and even fewer are classified as
proficient in math.
“Put simply, as currently designed, our proficiency rates do not reflect
the reality of student progress,” Sanders said. “They’re misaligned with
what it actually means to succeed in college and career.”
The inaccurate picture results from what are known as “cut scores” that
divide students into different performance categories, Sanders said.
Federal law requires states to administer assessments and to report
publicly how students are performing on those tests. But states are
given great latitude in deciding where to draw the dividing lines
between proficient and nonproficient, Sanders said. For many years,
Illinois has had some of the most rigorous proficiency standards in the
nation.
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Illinois Superintendent Tony Sanders participates in a previous
Illinois State Board of Education meeting. (Capitol News Illinois
photo by Andrew Adams)
The consequences of that kind of scoring system go beyond merely
unflattering report cards that show low percentages of students
performing at grade level, he said. It also results in schools being
unfairly labeled as needing interventions to improve their performance,
and students themselves being inaccurately labeled as not on track for
college or a career.
Proposed new system
Under the proposed new system, student scores will be divided into four
performance categories: below proficient, approaching proficient,
proficient, and above proficient. And a new system of cut scores will be
used to separate students into those four categories.
The new scoring system will apply to the Illinois Assessment of
Readiness, which covers English language arts and math in grades 3
through 8, as well as the Illinois Science Assessment, which is given to
students in grades 5 and 8. It will also be used for the ACT exams,
which will be used starting this year as the state assessment for
students in 11th grade.
Sanders emphasized that because the state is establishing new
performance categories and using new cut scores to define those
categories, it will not be possible to compare proficiency rates under
the new system with those of prior years.
“Proficiency rates in Illinois have been trending up, but on the 2025
report card, we will not be able to tell the magnitude of year-over-year
improvement based on our proficiency data because 2025 sets a new
baseline,” he said.
Instead, Sanders said, officials will compare future results with prior
years using a metric called the Student Growth Percentile, which uses
raw test scores to measure how much students have learned in a given
year relative to their peers.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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