Illinois State Board of Education Seeks No Child Left Behind Waiver

The standardized testing at the heart of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation has served as a virtual report card on local schools, and if Illinois schools were assigned a letter grade on those tests, most would be getting Fs.

did not make Adequate Yearly Progress, a NCLB guideline that focuses specifically on standardized test scores.

But the district surpassed state averages on test scores including the college-prep ACT, the Prairie State Assessment Exam and the Illinois Alternate Assessment. .

About 65 percent of Illinois schools total fail to meet standards under NCLB.

In February, the Illinois State Board of Education plans to seek a waiver from some of the law’s provisions now that the president has authorized states to seek exemptions if they commit to reform efforts.

Specifically, the state wants an exemption from the requirement that all students must pass standardized reading and math tests by 2014. The requirement as it stands now holds the state to have 100 percent of students meeting the NCLB requirements.
In October, the state released standardized test data for 2011.

Illinois Statehouse News reported on the results:

This past year, about half of Illinois’ 11th-graders, who take the Prairie State Achievement Exam, or PSAE, scored at or above the 85 percent benchmark:

• 51 percent in reading and math;
• 49 percent in science.

In all, 656 of Illinois’ 666 public high schools failed to meet NCLB requirements.

Students in third through eighth grades, overall, scored below the 85 percent benchmark, except for the following student groups who scored at or above the mark:

• 85 percent of eighth-graders in reading;
• 86 percent of eighth-graders in math;
• 87 percent of fourth-graders in math.

State Board of Education Chairman Gery Chico told Statehouse News that the failure rates show NCLB has “lost its usefulness.”
To receive a waiver, the state must:

• set stricter curriculum standards
• establish teacher and principal evaluations ties to student performance
• turn around 15 percent of the worst-performing schools

District 230 spokeswoman Carla Erdey declined to comment on the planned waiver request.

“This is a decision for the State Superintendent Chris Koch and the Illinois State Board of Education, not the school district,” Erdey wrote in an email.