Students in Illinois are steadily returning to class across Illinois’ 866 school districts and 3,835 schools. The state’s public schools have a lot of room for improvement to prepare students for life beyond the classroom.
Students are returning to school, maybe leaving parents to wonder how the public schools in the state are performing and what they can expect as their children return to classrooms?
The most recent state test scores show 41% of Illinois students in third through eighth grade read at grade level in spring 2024. In math, 28% were proficient.
But proficiency drops significantly by 11th grade. Only 31% of 11th graders were reading at grade level in spring 2024 and only 26% performed math proficiently.
Here is an overview of how public schools in the state are performing. Click here for a closer look at how your school district compares to the state average in reading, math and spending.
Reading and math proficiency in Illinois is low
The most recent test scores are for the 2023-2024 school year and show many students are struggling to meet grade-level standards in core subjects.
Just 41% of students in third through eighth grade could read at grade level that year. Only 28% met proficiency in math.
Among 11th-grade students, only 31% were proficient in reading on the SAT and 26% were proficient in math.
The low level of third-grade students reading at grade level is particularly concerning. Third grade is a critical reading milestone because students need to have learned to read by then or they will not be able to absorb the rest of their education.
Yet just 31% of Illinois third-grade students met or exceeded reading proficiency standards on the 2024 Illinois Assessment of Readiness. That means 7-in-10 third graders could not read at grade level.
Enrollment is dropping
Illinois public schools enrolled 1,850,838 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade in the 2024-2025 school year, according to the Illinois State Board of Education’s fall enrollment count. That marked a drop of over 2,500 students last school year compared to the count from the 2023-2024 school year.
Year-over-year enrollment in Illinois public schools has dropped 13 times during the past 15 years. There were only two periods, 2010-2011 and 2014-2015, where year-over-year enrollment increased.
More than 1-in-4 students are chronically absent
Chronic absenteeism in Illinois public schools continued to drop in 2024 after reaching a high of 30% in 2022, but it’s still high. According to the state’s most recent data, more than 1-in-4 students were chronically absent in the 2023-2024 school year.
High absenteeism is a warning sign for students, as research suggests frequent absences from school put students at a higher risk of poor outcomes, such as dropping out of school and lower academic achievement.
About 26% of Illinois students were chronically absent in the 2023-2024 school year. That compares to a rate of 17.5% in the last full school year before the pandemic.
The rate was 10 percentage points higher among Illinois’ low-income students: 36% missed at least 10% of their school days in 2024.
School spending is up
Illinois continues to spend more on education each year. The budget for the Illinois State Board of Education operations for the upcoming 2025-2026 school year is a record at nearly $11.2 billion. That is up from $10.8 billion in the previous school year.
Illinois education budgets have increased by nearly $4 billion during the past decade. Illinois’ general fund education budget was $7.2 billion 10 years ago during the 2016-2017 school year at a time when Illinois enrolled about 177,000 more students than it did last school year. The general fund budget has only decreased once year-over-year during the past decade, with it dropping by $113.9 million between the 2014-2015 school year and the 2015-2016 school year.
Looking ahead
As the new school year begins, leaders at Illinois public schools should be looking to address the low rates of academic proficiency, high rates of absenteeism and other critical issues facing the state’s public schools if they hope to reverse students exiting the public school system.
But more important than reversing Illinois’ enrollment declines is ensuring every Illinois student graduates their public school with the skills necessary to succeed in life beyond secondary school.
A vital first step is to ensure more third grade students are equipped to read proficiently by the end of their school year. Schools can do that if they:
- Provide an early universal reading screening for every student in first through third grades to identify reading deficiencies.
- Provide reading interventions for any student in first through third grades with a reading deficiency.
- Notify parents and keep them engaged in their student’s reading deficiency diagnosis and intervention.
- Ensure schools use science-based instruction methods to teach reading.
- Discuss and determine grade promotion decisions with parents and teachers for students whose reading deficiencies are not remedied by the end of the school year.
There is more at stake than bad grades for young Illinoisans who are struggling to learn vital literacy skills in their early school years. Elementary students need intervention now before their lack of childhood learning becomes a barrier to a high school diploma and higher earning potential, and a slide into poverty.
Use the table below to see how your district compares to state averages in reading, math and spending.
