State report card on its schools

Students at four Illinois high schools scored last year with the brightest across the country on the American College Test.

Students in 33 Chicago high schools scored with the worst.

One in three Illinois public school students was a minority in 1986-1987, up from one in four 10 years before.

The higher the grade level the less likely an Illinois student would score in the top quarter of a nationally normed reading comprehension test.

These tidbits and a host of other details on the public education infrastructure and student achievement were shared with parents and taxpayers in the second round of annual report cards issued by schools in October. The disclosure is required under the Better Schools Acountability Act, part of the 1985 school reform measure. Schools report the information to the State Board of Education. The state board calculates school, district and state averages and provides the information to school districts. The schools can add information but cannot omit or delete from the state report when they publish their report card and send it to parents and taxpayers.

Summaries of statewide totals prepared by the State Board of Education paint a picture of the state of Illinois' public schools in the 1986-1987 school year. That picture shows:

Few changes in the education establishment since the 1986 report cards:

• Students: There were 1,797,552 pupils in Illinois public schools in the 1986-1987 school year. Of that total 3.2 percent had limited English language proficiency, and 29.1 percent were from low-income families. Between the 1986 and 1987 report cards, the percentage of students from low-income families increased from 23.7 percent to 29.1. A change in the way Chicago schools counted poverty pupils accounted for most of that increase. Chicago schools' percentage of low-income students jumped from 45 percent to 67 percent.
• Teachers: There were 100,526 teachers in state public schools last year. One in six was black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American. (By comparison, one in three students was a minority.) Seven of 10 were female. The average teacher had 15.2 years' experience; 55 percent held bachelor's degrees while the remaining 45 percent had master's or higher degrees.
• Schools: The state's 3,978 schools (eight fewer than in 1985-1986) ranged in size from 17 to 4,388. The average elementary school had 383 students; the average junior high 357; and the average high school 794.
• Attendance: Not all classrooms were full every day. The older the students, the less likely they were to be in school. Attendance rates were 94.9 percent for elementary schools, 94.7 percent for junior high schools, and 91.5 percent for high schools. The overall rate was 93.8 percent, slightly better than the previous year's rate of 93.6 percent. It means that an average of 111,400 students per day missed school.
• Class size: Class size was largest at the elementary level and smallest for high schools. Averages for the 1986-1987 school year were: kindergarten, 22.2; first grade, 23.2; third grade, 23.5; sixth grade, 23.3; and eighth grade, 20.1. At the high school level classes were smaller. They averaged 19.7, down slightly from the 20.3 reported on the 1986 report card.

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• Mobility factor (percentage of students who move during a school year): This was 21.2 percent for 1986-1987, up slightly from 20.8 percent in 1985-1986. There were 148 schools, including 135 elementary schools, with a mobility rate of more than 50 percent. In those schools less than half the children who started in September were still in school in June.
• Graduation rate: This is the percentage of ninth grade entrants who eventually earn a diploma; it stood at 82.6 percent. In three of four schools it was higher than 80 percent, and half had a rate higher than 89 percent. In 131 schools the rate was 100 percent. In 22 it was less than 50 percent.

Academic achievement improved over 1986 at all levels. Students in different schools take different tests, and schools report the percentage of their students who finish in the top and bottom quarters to the State Board of Education. Those proportions are reported for grades 3, 6, 8 and 10. A second measure is the American College Test (ACT) administered to graduating seniors and used in 28 states.

• Reading comprehension: Scores were up at each level over 1986. Only in grade 10 did fewer than one quarter of the Illinois students taking the test finish in the top quarter nationally, and at each level fewer than one quarter of Illinois students finished in the bottom quarter nationally. The results do point to some problems, however. The scores continue to show that the longer students have been in school the less likely they are to score in the top quarter on reading comprehension. The reverse is generally true for the bottom quarter in reading scores.
• Mathematics: Scores showed a similar improvement over the previous year at each level. Nearly a third of Illinois students finished in the top quarter nationally and less than a fifth finished in the bottom quarter. Again, there was a sharp deterioration of scores between grades 8 and 10.
• American College Test (ACT): For 1987 Illinois graduates composite scores were 18.9, slightly above the national average of 18.7 For students planning to attend college the average score was 19.6. Those same figures for the previous year were 19.1 for state students, 18.9 national average, and 19.9 for Illinois students who planned to go to college. The number taking the test increased 2,700, an indication that more students are planning to attend college.

The report card, for the first time, ranked schools with 40 or more students taking the test to national norms. Four schools, all in the suburban collar counties around Cook County, ranked in the 98th percentile, better than 98 percent of schools nationally. At the other end of the scale, however, 33 schools, all in Chicago, ranked in the first percentile, worse than 99 percent of schools nationally (the 33 schools comprise nearly half the public high schools in Chicago).

Illinois public schools spent more and paid higher salaries to teachers and administrators than they had in 1986.

• Fiscal: The average teacher's salary was $28,302, up 4.8 percent or $1,302 from the previous school year. The average administrator's salary was $43,958, up 6.5 percent from the 1986 figure of $41,284. Average operating expenditures per pupil were $3,809, an increase of $283 or 8 percent from the 1986 report. The operating figures are a year old.

The State Board of Education believes the public should have that information, says Sally Pancrazio, chief of research and evaluation for the board. The information allows a comparison of individual schools with state averages and an overall picture of the state of education in Illinois, she says. But she cautions that the statewide summaries do not show the extreme variability between schools.

Pancrazio describes the news media's interest in the report cards as "phenomenal." She says stories she saw this year tended to be more analytical than the first year when she says the news stories were often simply descriptive of the scores.

As for parental interest in the school report cards, she acknowledges that it has been less than the board hoped. "We would hope they could understand them as competently as they read baseball statistics," she says. There was some parental interest in newspaper accounts of low ACT scores in Chicago high schools, according to Pancrazio, but she says, "For the most part parents are primarily interested in how their children are doing."

For parents to fully understand all of the statistics on the report cards, she believes it will take some educating of parents. There is a parents' guide to help them.

Meanwhile, the classes, tests and other measurable activities continue this school year, to be quantified, averaged and reported next October to parents, taxpayers and the media. □

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