Illinois recently released the 2025 School Report Card that should prompt a serious conversation about the future of education in the state.
This year’s report card, the first issued under Illinois’ new scoring system, showed higher proficiency rates in reading and math. But state leaders have been clear about why: They lowered the bar for proficiency. The numbers look better on paper not because students learned more, but because state leaders changed the definition of success to better fit their own narratives.
Illinois now faces a choice.
The state can continue down a path of weakened standards and cosmetic improvements or it can immediately course-correct, reset expectations and chart an honest path forward that delivers real academic gains for students and real value for taxpayers.
Lowering the bar is not a strategy to improve student outcomes. It is a waving of the white flag.
Illinois students are still struggling with the fundamentals. Fewer than 4 in 10 students are proficient in math. Achievement gaps across racial, ethnic and economic lines remain wide. And rising graduation rates tell us little if diplomas are not backed by genuine readiness for college or careers.
If the state is serious about improvement, the focus must return to what actually works.
That starts with reading. Illinois should fully align literacy instruction with the science of reading and eliminate discredited practices such as three-cueing, which encourages students to guess at words instead of learning how to decode them. States that have embraced evidence-based reading instruction are seeing real gains. Illinois should follow that lead rather than masking weak outcomes with lower benchmarks.
Math must be treated with the same urgency. Foundational math skills are built in elementary school, yet too often they are shortchanged. Illinois should require at least 60 minutes of daily math instruction in the early grades, ensuring students have the time and structure necessary to master core concepts. No accountability system can compensate for insufficient instruction.
These reforms are not radical. They are the minimum expectations of a serious education system. And we know they work
In both reading and math, Mississippi students are now significantly outperforming Illinois students despite Mississippi having the highest poverty rate in the country. Once ranked 50th, Mississippi is now ninth in fourth grade reading and 16th in fourth grade math in 2024, beating Illinois — 29th in reading, 33rd in math — by nearly half a grade level.
Yet instead of strengthening standards and accountability or even keeping the standards in place, Illinois’ state superintendent and State Board of Education have chosen to lower the passing scores on testing, soften school labels and remove key indicators that once provided early warnings when students were falling behind. Each of these decisions moves the state further away from the clarity taxpayers, students and families need to evaluate the effectiveness of the system and the readiness of students.
There’s strong public support for accountability. According to a ExcelinEd survey taken of 1,000 registered voters last fall, 65% of Americans believe there is a lack of accountability for persistently underperforming schools. Asked to select indicators that show how well a school is performing, most respondents pointed to student grade-level performance, student academic growth over time and graduation rates.
Taxpayers have repeatedly been told that increased investment in public education will produce better results. While the investments have come, the results have not. So instead, Illinois leaders are taking the easy way out by moving the goalposts to their benefit. This exercise won’t ensure more students reach grade-level proficiency or are better prepared for their postsecondary lives. It will just give the appearance that they are.
Moving the goalposts may make these report cards look better in the short term, but it does nothing for the students who leave school unable to read proficiently, unprepared for algebra or saddled with college debt and limited job prospects.
Illinois has an opportunity to choose a different path that’s grounded in high standards, strong accountability and real results. The question is whether state leaders are willing to follow that path.
If taxpayers are going to invest billions in public education, they deserve more than better optics. They deserve genuine positive outcomes.
Bruce Rauner, who served as the 42nd governor of Illinois, is a board member of the Foundation for Excellence in Education and the Foundation for Excellence in Education in Action.
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