Illinois students could be held to new standards for school testing, a shift the state school board says will better prepare them for college and postsecondary education careers while accurately measuring performance levels.
The Illinois State Board of Education announced proposed changes to state standardized testing Tuesday — including the ACT, the Illinois Assessment of Readiness and the Illinois Science Assessment — that would create consistent measures of student performance on all state exams and make it easier to understand and track students’ progress. It would also adjust the proficiency threshold for each exam section based on grade level, determining the minimum score a student must achieve to be considered on track for their grade level in learning.
There are three major exams that Illinois students take while in school: The Illinois Assessment of Readiness is administered to students in grades three through eight each year to test their skills in English language arts and math, while the Illinois Science Assessment is only administered to students in fifth and eighth grades. Students take the PreACT in ninth and 10th grade and the ACT in 11th grade.
Currently, the three exams do not use the same levels or benchmarks to assess student learning based on their exam scores. The current testing measurements have multiple performance levels for students to be sorted into, which are categories of score ranges on the state assessment.
