Thursday, the Illinois State Board of Education (IBSE) released the annual Illinois Report Card. The Illinois Report Card provides a snapshot of academic achievement, student and teacher information, and financial data at the state, district, and school levels. USD116 has prioritized its district and school improvement goals in teaching and learning, focusing on reading/language arts, mathematics, and chronic absenteeism.  Our 2025-2030 strategic plan priority areas specifically focus on our students’ Academic Growth and Achievement, Staff Development and Retention, Family and Community as Agency, and District Systems and Operations.  You can learn more about our new 2025-2030 Strategic Plan on our website. As a district, we are committed to our values of Belonging, Community, Integrity, and Pride to be Stronger Together, Leading for the Future. 

The data in the 2024-2025 School Report Card represents the first year following the implementation of the 2024 redistricting plan.  In response to movement in the elementary student population in Urbana, the Board of Education, working with RSP Consultants and after collecting feedback from the community, voted to implement a new dual-language school at Yankee Ridge Elementary School.  In addition, many other Urbana elementary students received a new home school as part of the plan.  It is important to note that when comparing the 2024-2025 school report card data, demographic, and other data to previous years, this year’s data will include the creation of the new Dual Language Program at Yankee Ridge and student movements between buildings. 

Also of note, when reviewing our report card, it is essential to know that this year, the Federal Government changed how race codes are reported. Instead of the historical race codes for White, Black, Asian, American Indian, and Pacific Islander, with a separate category for Hispanic students, Hispanic is now included in the combined race/ethnicity with an additional category for Middle Eastern or North African (MENA). In some instances, you will see that student group data has been redacted from public view when the student counts are too small. This practice is in place to protect student privacy and prevent the identification of individual students in small sample sizes, ensuring that all students’ privacy is respected. 

Chronic Absenteeism

We are excited to share that all our district’s hard work and efforts to focus on student attendance and chronic absenteeism have made a difference. Thanks to our focus on attendance during the 2024–2025 school year, we reduced our chronic absenteeism rate from 44% to 39%. This reduction is an important step forward, and it shows what we can achieve when we work together.  Our District’s goal for the 2025-2026 school year is to decrease by another five percent, from 39% to 34%. 

Graduation Rate

We continue to celebrate that in 2024-2025, more of our high school students participated in advanced coursework, especially dual credit courses, and enrolled in our Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses at higher rates. These opportunities keep more of our students engaged and on track for success. Unfortunately, this increase did not translate into an improvement in our 4-year graduation rate, which dropped from 83% to 80% while our 5-year graduation rate increased from 82% to 85%.  The 5-year graduation rate was affected by the higher number of our high school students who needed an additional year to graduate, either during or after the pandemic.  

One of our key 2025-2026 Strategic Planning Goals is to increase the number of students graduating from Urbana High School within four years. To achieve this, we have expanded our interventions with a more dedicated focus on alternative programming at Tiger Academy. This includes offering more engaging credit-recovery options in this non-traditional setting. In 2024, Tiger Academy saw great success, with many students who started the year not on track to graduate. By the end of the school year, with the use of non-traditional, alternative supports, many students were able to catch up on credits and graduate from Urbana High School on time. The District is also focusing on increasing the number of students enrolled in the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) elective classes, encouraging participation in Academy 9 and Academy 10, and utilizing the expertise of co-teachers to work with first-year teachers and long-term substitutes. These initiatives aim to enhance students’ sense of belonging and foster positive relationships with staff, ensuring all Urbana graduates are future-ready and prepared for college, careers, and life. 

Illinois’ New Right-Sized Benchmarks  – What Families Need to Know

For the past 18 months, the Illinois State Board of Education has gone through an extensive process to “right-size” Illinois’ benchmarks for proficiency for grades 3-11. Our 2025 proficiency rates have been recalibrated and new baselines for measuring progress have been established; as a result of this “right-sizing”, proficiency rates cannot be directly compared to previous years. The State Board has shared that the new benchmarks provide a more accurate picture of student performance than we have had in prior years. While the definition of proficient has changed, this change has not impacted students’ raw scale scores or the calculation of student growth percentiles. This means we will still be able to compare performance over time using the student growth percentile. 

Per State Superintendent Dr. Tony Sanders, “this shift in benchmarks did not lower Illinois’ learning standards; what we expect students to know and be able to do remains the same this year as it did last year, and the work that our teachers and students are doing in the classroom remains the same. We simply right-sized our performance benchmarks on how we label our students.”

As a district, our proficiency in English Language Arts (ELA) continues to outpace our proficiency in Math. While most elementary schools saw overall increases in ELA growth, some schools saw declines in math growth. We will continue to work with our science-of-reading-aligned literacy curriculum in grades K-8 to improve in this area.  Our new ELA curriculum is much more rigorous than what we have had in the past, and we look forward to seeing more gains in ELA proficiency beyond our first year of implementation. We also look forward to the launch of the State Board’s new Numeracy Plan next year, which will help us strengthen our math instruction by providing more instructional and evidence-based strategies for teachers to improve our math proficiency in the years to come. 

Annual Summative Designations – State School Improvement and Designation

One component of the School Report Card is the annual summative designation, a federally required descriptor of how well our schools meet the needs of all students. School improvement status begins with an initial annual summative designation of Intensive, Comprehensive, or Targeted and continues for four years, regardless of changes in annual summative designations. The only exception to this is when a school in Targeted improvement status receives a Comprehensive designation during its Targeted school improvement cycle. In this scenario, the school’s status will reset to four years of  Comprehensive support.  

ISBE provides tiered professional and financial resources during the four years of school improvement status. The goal of school improvement is to build school leaders’ capacity to implement and sustain effective school improvement practices, ultimately helping schools exit improvement status. Our district is firmly rooted in our commitment to improving student outcomes through our adopted curriculum and increased use of high-leverage instructional strategies, thereby improving students’ engagement so they want to be in school every day.  We are encouraged that with a higher rate of teacher retention (i.e., fewer new teachers) and a lower rate of unfilled positions, which means fewer long-term substitute teachers, we can continue to provide more unified professional development and training in our curriculum adoptions, decreasing our exclusionary practices around student behavior, and improving our sense of belonging with our youth. 

Here are a few highlights from this year’s official school designations.

We are thrilled to announce that Urbana Middle School’s designation was elevated from Comprehensive to Targeted.  This was largely due to changes in both ELA and Math proficiency driven by the “right-sized performance benchmarks”.  We celebrate the fact that their chronic absenteeism rate improved by almost 3.5 percentage points, indicating that our efforts to focus on chronically truant youth were impactful. The district is confident that, with a new administration, new structures, and new systems of support, UMS will show even greater evidence of growth and achievement in the years to come. 

We recognize and applaud Urbana High School for its continued Commendable status.  Following the creation of our Dual Language elementary school, Yankee Ridge Multilingual School achieved a baseline designation of Commendable.  Our goal is to ensure they remain commendable schools following the 2025-2026 school year. 

Leal reduced the number of priority-area groups identified under the school-improvement criteria.  They are intentionally using their baseline data following redistricting to monitor growth on district-level benchmarks and state assessments to show improved achievement for all students. 

While our school improvement efforts did not produce all the results we hoped for in the prescribed timeline, we will continue to work with our school improvement teams, our ISBE accountability partners, and our principal leaders to maximize all of the supports and resources that our designated schools receive as part of the School Improvement Process.  

View the complete Illinois Report Card data at www.illinoisreportcard.com.