Public education budgets balloon while enrollment, proficiency,
standards drop
[August 21, 2025]
By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – In return for soaring state spending on education,
Illinois taxpayers are getting chronic absenteeism, poor academic
proficiency and declining enrollment from the state’s public schools.
The Illinois Policy Institute found that Illinois’ education budget
increased by nearly $4 billion over the last decade, while the number of
students enrolled in public schools decreased by about 177,000 during
the same period.
Illinois Policy Institute Policy Analyst Hannah Schmid said poor
academic proficiency and chronic absenteeism are coming at a higher
cost.
“So the state spending has grown over two times faster than student
achievement has grown. We’ve actually seen achievement in math decline
over the past few years,” Schmid told The Center Square.
The state’s education budget for the 2025-26 school year is a
record-high $11.2 billion.
“Spending is up 24%, reading is just up 9% and math has actually dropped
by 11%, so we’re seeing poor outcomes for students,” Schmid said.
According to the Illinois State Board of Education’s Illinois Report
Card, the state’s public school students had a chronic absenteeism rate
of 26.3% last year.
“Research suggests that frequent absences from school put students at a
higher risk of these poor outcomes that we’re talking about, such as
dropping out of school or poor academic achievement,” Schmid explained.
Schmid said high rates of chronic absenteeism in Illinois public schools
signal a warning for students’ futures.
Chicago Public Schools students fared far worse, with an overall chronic
absenteeism rate of 40.8% in 2024. The chronic absenteeism rate for CPS
teachers was also reported around 40%.
On August 13, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) announced it
was adopting new “research-informed and right-sized” assessment
performance levels.
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Illinois Superintendent of Schools Tony Sanders
Greg Bishop / The Center Square
“The new, unified levels correct long-standing misalignment between
Illinois' state assessments and other real college and career
readiness expectations,” ISBE said in a statement.
State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders said Illinois’
proficiency benchmarks mislabeled students, causing qualified
students to miss out on opportunities for acceleration and telling a
whole generation of students who were ready for college that they
were not.
“Illinois' new performance levels bring much-needed alignment
between grade levels, subjects, and actual college and career
readiness expectations,” Sanders said in a statement from ISBE.
Schmid said the board lowered the scores needed for students to be
considered proficient in reading and math.
“This lowering of standards or lowering of benchmarks will
ultimately inflate the percentage of students that we see meeting
these proficiency standards in this upcoming October (ISBE) Report
Card that we’ll see from the spring 2025 test,” Schmid said.
Schmid said the new standards will not provide a more accurate view
of student performance.
“Instead we’re seeing actions by the State Board of Education that
threaten to obscure the crisis of students who are struggling in our
state to meet proficiency in core subjects,” Schmid said.
Schmid said students could be denied the extra help they need if
they are no longer marked as struggling or failing to meet
proficiency standards.
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