Kids aren’t the only ones who want top marks on their report cards.

Public school districts across the state also are evaluated based on their performance each year on the Illinois Report Card.

Local districts have been exploring and discussing the data on the 2024-25 Report Card, which was released at the end of October.

The Illinois State Board of Education gives annual summative designations based on factors such as reading and math growth and proficiency, chronic absenteeism, and high school graduation rates.

Schools performing in the top 10% statewide are designated as “exemplary.”

Those not in the top 10% but that have no underperforming student groups and a graduation rate above 67% for high schools are “commendable.”

Schools are “targeted” when one or more student groups are performing at or below all students in the lowest-performing 5% of schools.

“Comprehensive” schools include those in the lowest-performing 5% of schools and any high school with a graduation rate of 67% or less.

An “intensive” school is one that has completed a four-year comprehensive support cycle but continues to have performance issues.

The state is in the process of changing its accountability system, meaning these school evaluations will look different next year. This will be the final year that the current ranking system is used.

Problems with the present system include limiting “exemplary” status to the top 10% of schools, rather than basing it on specific criteria, and the “commendable” status being too broad a category to offer meaningful direction, state officials have said.

Kankakee

Kankakee School District 111 now has three commendable schools, two targeted schools, three comprehensive schools and one intensive school.

Kankakee High School was designated commendable, along with Steuben Elementary, with pre-K through third grades; and Lincoln Cultural Center, home to the district’s K-8 Montessori magnet program.

Although it improved its status this year, KHS was targeted last year and remains in the school improvement cycle.

Steuben also remains in the first year of the school improvement cycle after being labeled as comprehensive last year.

Kankakee Junior High School, with seventh and eighth grades, and King Middle School, with third through sixth grades, are both targeted schools.

Both schools were targeted for the underperformance of children with disabilities.

The three comprehensive schools are Kennedy Middle School, with third through sixth grades; Mark Twain Primary, with pre-K through third grades; and Taft Primary, with kindergarten through third grades.

Edison Primary, with kindergarten through third grades, is intensive, meaning its status hasn’t improved from last year’s designation.

“Our goal is to interpret the data through the lens of continuous improvement, identifying where our instructional priorities are taking hold and where some additional supports may be needed,” said Kelly Gilbert, Kankakee’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

The indicators and weights used in the school evaluations are measured differently for elementary schools and high schools, Gilbert said.

For example, the graduation rate accounts for 50% of a high school’s overall accountability score.

At elementary and middle schools, growth in English language arts and math each accounts for 25% of the score.

Gilbert also noted that the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, which is used to measure students’ proficiency before high school, has been identified as one of the most restrictive benchmarks for ELA and math proficiency in the nation.

That led the state to update the way it defined proficiency this year, lowering the proficiency cut scores in ELA and math, and raising them in science.

Because the definitions recently changed, direct comparisons with previous years won’t give the full picture of a school’s improvement journey.

“As we think about our proficiency scores, we do want to celebrate the increased scores; however, we do so with caution,” Gilbert said.

Districtwide, Kankakee’s proficiencies were at 25.2% in ELA and 14.7% in math. So, about a quarter of students are defined as proficient in reading, and fewer than 1 out of 5 students are defined as proficient in math.

Kankakee’s high school graduation rate reached a new high of 85.1%. Likewise, the state of Illinois as a whole climbed to a record-high graduation rate of 89%.

Kankakee’s overall chronic absenteeism rate was 41.5%, approaching twice the statewide average of 25.4%. That means 41.5% of all Kankakee students missed 10% or more days in the school year, regardless of having an excuse.

The district’s growth in ELA and math followed closely behind levels of academic growth statewide, Gilbert noted.

“The bars are a lot closer when it comes to growth,” she said.

For Kankakee, the average ELA growth percentile was 43.5 for grades three through eight and 43.9 at the high school level, while the average math growth percentile was 43.4 for grades three through eight and 45.2 at the high school level.

Statewide, the average growth percentile in ELA and math was at about 50 for all levels.

“That’s really exciting,” Gilbert said. “It means our students are growing, and that growth over time will lead to that proficiency that we are also measured by.”

Bradley Elementary

In Bradley Elementary School District 61, all three schools were designated as commendable for the first time since 2017.

Bradley Superintendent Chris Hammond lauded the improvements – specifically for Bradley West, which improved from last year’s targeted designation – but said the district still has work to do, especially when it comes to math.

“We’re really proud of the work we’ve been doing in every building,” he said.

Some of that work has included a focus on professional learning communities, a shift to standards-based grading and curriculum updates, Hammond said.

Bradley East, with grades pre-K through second, was targeted as recently as 2023, but it improved to commendable in 2024 and 2025.

Meanwhile, Bradley West, with grades three through five, improved from its targeted designation last year, and Bradley Central, with grades six through eight, maintained its commendable status.

“It’s great to be commendable,” Hammond said. “We would love to be exemplary.”

The biggest area where the district can make gains toward exemplary status is in math, he said.

The district’s overall math proficiency was 21.4%, compared with 38.4% statewide. The district’s average math growth percentile was 44.2, compared with 50 statewide.

“We’re in a great position to grow and keep growing,” Hammond said. “... Hopefully, we don’t ever get to that targeted space again, and we continue to move toward exemplary.”

Another area the district has been seeking to improve for years is attendance.

The district’s rate of chronic absenteeism was 20%.

Although it is better than the statewide chronic absenteeism rate of 25.4%, it still means about 1 in 5 Bradley students are chronically absent.

The district has made strides, however, in declining from its 2024 and 2023 chronic absenteeism rates of 25.4% and 25.8%, respectively.

Hammond said the attendance improvements likely were a factor in the district’s improved designations, but not the driving force.

Growth was seen in almost every component measured in their accountability scores, he said.

The district’s ELA proficiency was particularly strong (46.6% overall), with each of the three schools scoring 100% of the points measured toward their accountability scores in that area. The district’s ELA growth percentile was 51.8.

Bourbonnais Elementary

In Bourbonnais Elementary School District 53, the state designated two exemplary schools, two commendable schools and one targeted school.

Liberty Intermediate, with grades four through six, and Shabbona Elementary, with kindergarten through third grade, are exemplary, the state’s highest designation for the top 10% performing schools.

Liberty has now been exemplary for two years in a row. Shabbona reached exemplary status for the first time.

Shepard and LeVasseur elementary schools, two pre-K through third-grade buildings, are both commendable.

Bourbonnais Upper Grade Center, with grades seven and eight, is targeted. The groups targeted as in need of support were multiracial students and children with disabilities.

“We were designated this year as targeted, and I won’t lie, that stung when we got that information,” BUGC Principal Jeremy Outsen said. “... No doubt we’re a little off-track, but we’re not going to be there for long.”

Overall, the district had average growth percentiles of 50.7 in ELA and 51.4 in math, placing them just above the statewide average.

Across the district, 59% of Bourbonnais students are proficient in ELA, and 43.7% are proficient in math.

Chronic absenteeism was 19%, up from 17.7% last year and down slightly from 19.4% in 2023. Still, the district is below the statewide rate of 25.4% and has improved from its high point of 26.2% chronic absenteeism in 2022.

District 53 Superintendent Adam Ehrman noted that Liberty took a few years of work to go from targeted to exemplary.

“We’re focusing on how we can continue to move the needle all the way across the board,” Ehrman said.

Following that same trajectory, BUGC should be able to make the same transformation, he said. The school is implementing a new curriculum in alignment with the district, as well as staff coaching.

“We know the road map; now we’re just building it,” Ehrman said.

Ehrman also noted that LeVasseur missed the cutoff to be exemplary by a “razor-thin margin.”

LeVasseur’s overall accountability index score was 81.87 out of 100. Exemplary schools achieved a score of 81.99 and above.

“I’m not even sure that I’ve ever seen, in my entire career, a school miss it by that much,” Ehrman said. “It’s exciting for them, but also it’s driving them now to push across.”

View specific school and district reports on the Illinois State Board of Education’s Illinois Report Card website at illinoisreportcard.com.