Test data from this year’s Illinois Report Card shows that overall student proficiency at Evanston Township High School in English/Language Arts (ELA) and math stayed nearly or exactly the same from the year prior, while science proficiency decreased by 5.2 percentage points.
Pete Bavis, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, presented a portion of this data to the board during the “year in review” report at the Tuesday board meeting.
ETHS students in most demographic groups and across most school subjects continue to score significantly higher than statewide averages. In math overall, the percentage of proficient students at ETHS is 16.3 percentage points higher than the state average. For ELA, it’s 13.8 percentage points and for science it’s 13.6 percentage points.
But disparities in performance across demographics groups at ETHS persist as well.
Longtime disparity issues
Most demographic groups at ETHS score higher than their statewide demographic group averages. White students at ETHS, though, achieve above state averages in every subject at higher rates than other demographic groups at ETHS achieve above their own group’s state averages.
And some demographic groups at ETHS — including low-income students in math, and both low-income and Black students in ELA — lag behind state averages in overall proficiency.
After the presentation Tuesday evening, board member Patricia Maunsell asked Davis if he believed the report was a good reflection of the school.
“The true value add of Evanston Township High School is not in these numbers,” he said. “It’s in what we do in our classrooms. It’s in how we socialize our students, so that they can walk into any room, have any conversation. They can be leaders, they can be collaborators, they can talk to anyone, and they have that sense of empowerment walking out of here. And that is not going to ever be measured on a report card.”
Demographics vary
He went on to explain the difficulties school officials have had finding schools with similar demographics and numbers for comparison with ETHS testing data, especially within the Central Suburban League, the sports conference ETHS competes in.
“It’s apparent — especially if you’re in sports and you go and visit those other schools — it’s very apparent that we are uniquely different,” said Board Vice President Monique Parsons. “I think this is concerning, regardless, especially when we have a narrative that says white students are successful here and students of color are not.”
This is not the first time board members have expressed concern in these disparities, nor the most intense.
Board members expressed more ardent comments regarding these disparities in student performance at the joint Evanston/Skokie School District 65 and Evanston Township High School District 202 meeting earlier this year.
Those at the meeting described low math proficiency numbers seen in the two schools’ population of black students as “horrific,” “unacceptable” and “really bad.”
At last year’s student achievement report, Board member Leah Piekarz commented that “there’s always a discrepancy within our own data that is really significant between white and for the most part Asian, and on the other side, Black/Brown students, students with IEPs [individualized education programs], multilingual students, low-income students and homeless students.”
The year prior, in 2022, concerns at District 202’s student achievement board meeting centered performance related to the pandemic, but this report, too, showed disparities.
Superintendent Marcus Campbell also noted at the most recent Tuesday night board meeting that SAT testing historically has “offered some real complexities with race.” [1]
This past school year was the last time students will take the SAT, as the state recently entered a five-year contract for $53 million with ACT Inc.
What counts as ‘proficient’?
Since 2017, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) has used the SAT (which originally stood for Scholastic Aptitude Test) as the official standardized test to determine proficiency for high school students.
Proficiency levels for the test are broken out into four score-dependent categories: Partially Meets Standards (200-420 for ELA, 200-440 for math); Approaching Standards (430-530 for ELA, 450-530 for Math); Meets Standards (540-630 for ELA, 540-660 for math); and Exceeds Standards (640-800 for ELA, 670-800 for math).
The four categories represent “degrees of mastery of the Illinois Learning Standards,” according to ISBE, and are different from the SAT’s “college readiness” indicators.
For science, 11th graders in the state take the Illinois Science Assessment, which is also broken out into four proficiency categories: Emerging (Score of 700-772); Developing (Score of 773-795); Proficient (Score of 796-833); and Exemplary (Score of 834-900).
The graphics created by the RoundTable for this analysis utilize these proficiency breakouts on the SAT and ISA.
Overall proficiency percentages for a school can differ slightly from these specific proficiency breakouts, as they also include test results from the Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM) tests, which are online assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities.
The overall proficiencies incorporating this test also are calculated using a slightly different formula than what is submitted as part of federal accountability reporting for some schools statewide. More information about these calculations can be found on the Illinois Report Card website.
Marginal increase in math proficiency
The percent of students meeting SAT math proficiency increased 0.3 of a percentage point between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, from 43.9% to 44.2% of all students meeting proficiency.
This small increase comes with added complexities when viewing proficiency level breakdowns.
For example, a higher portion of students than the year prior fall under the Partially Meets Standards category. The number of students in that low-scoring subgroup increased from 31.3% to 33.5%. Meanwhile, the percent of students in the Exceeds Standards category dropped from 15.1% the year prior to 13.5%.
Proficiency breakdowns on the SAT math subject test since 2017 provide a look at patterns over a longer period of time.
Before 2023, the percentage of students who met or exceeded standards in math had been decreasing since 2017. Proficiency levels took a more substantial drop between 2021 and 2022 during the pandemic, though, when the number of students meeting or exceeding proficiency dropped by 5 percentage points.
In the last two years the percentage of students deemed proficient in math has risen slowly, although disparities continue to exist.
“We don’t really know what it means to do fourth grade math online, sixth grade math online,” Bavis said of pandemic education in math. “We have a feeling we can say definitively that it didn’t go very well, but we’re digging out of that.”
Changes in ETHS math placement
Starting this year, ETHS has taken new steps to help address the “algebra gap” the school has seen in incoming freshmen.
In 2023, the school administered the standardized STAR Algebra 1 math test to all algebra units. Despite many students having taken some form of algebra before at District 65 schools, 10 out of the 14 algebra classes were scoring at a sixth grade math level.
Prior to this year, students’ previous course completion and teacher recommendations played a role in their math placement.
Now, students are sorted into their freshman math classes based only on their Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test in eighth grade.
The high school is also making math classes smaller, offering individualized education where needed and putting two teachers in every Algebra 1 class, among other remedies. These changes come from a plan launched by the school’s math department chair, Dale Leibforth, in February of this year.
Report cards over the next few years may provide insight into how those changes are impacting overall math proficiency and addressing performance gaps.
English proficiency plateaus
The percent of students who met ELA proficiency overall at ETHS stayed exactly the same over the last two years, at 53.2%. The 2022-23 school year saw a rebound from pandemic-era proficiency drops, but that rebound plateaued this past year.
Breakouts of SAT proficiency levels offer some positives, though.
In the last year, the percentage of those only partially meeting proficiency decreased, meaning more students who aren’t meeting proficiency are approaching it than the year prior. The percentage of students exceeding expectations in ELA increased, as well.
English/Language Arts proficiency levels also took a recognizable dip during pandemic years — but had already been decreasing before, much like math proficiency.
The most noticeable change in proficiency in ELA at ETHS happened between 2021 and 2022, when the total percentage of those meeting or exceeding proficiency dropped below 50%. The 2021-22 school year is the only time fewer than 50% of students met or exceeded proficiency in ELA.
Proficiencies in science decrease by 5.2 percentage points
The overall percentage of students meeting science proficiency levels dropped by 5.2 percentage points, falling from 71.5% to 66.3%. Despite that dip, overall science proficiency numbers at ETHS remain higher than ELA and math.
On top of the overall proficiency drop, those showing exemplary performance in science dropped by 4.9 percentage points from 2022-23 to 2023-24.
The portion of students in the lowest proficiency group — emerging — shrank, however, while the segment in the developing range grew. This suggests that more students not meeting proficiency are closer to achieving it.
Like math and ELA, science proficiency levels hit lows during pandemic years. In 2021, only 42.6% of students fell into the two categories of proficient or exemplary performance on the Illinois Science Assessment. Scores had rebounded in the years following, though, until the drop this year.
Racial disparities persist, but some growth recorded
White and Asian students at ETHS have achieved historically higher percentages of proficiency in all subjects than students who are Hispanic, Black or who identify as two or more races.
These disproportionalities between race and ethnic groups unfortunately persist. [2]
Only 20.1% of Black students at ETHS met proficiency overall in ELA in 2023-24, both a drop from the 2022-23 rate of 22.6% and a drop below the 2023-24 overall state average of 20.3%.
Ahead of state averages
The percentage of ETHS Hispanic students, white students, Asian students and students of two or more racial identities proficient in ELA are all higher than state averages. White students, though, outperform their statewide ELA demographic average by a higher percentage than any other racial demographic group.
In math, all racial demographic groups at ETHS continue to outperform their demographic group averages statewide in overall proficiency. White students, similar to ELA, outperform at higher percentages than other groups.
Asian students and white students dropped by 1.3 and 8.4 percentage points, respectively, in math proficiency levels from 2022-23 to 2023-24. Despite these drops, the proficiency levels recorded for those demographic groups is still highly disproportionate to other racial demographic groups at ETHS.
Bavis noted the lasting impacts of online math education during the pandemic have contributed to these disparities.
“It doesn’t affect each student group equally,” Bavis said. “It disproportionately has impacted Black/African American students, Hispanic/Latino students, students with IEPs [individualized education programs].”
Black students and students of two or more races also saw the most significant drops in science proficiency.
In 2022-23, 50.6% of Black students were proficient in science, nearly double the state average for their demographic group. In 2023-24, though, the percentage dropped to 38%.
Students of two or more races had record high levels of science proficiency in 2022-23 at 90.9%, higher than any other group. In 2023-24, though, the percentage dropped to 71.4%.
Small positives can be seen, though, with math proficiency levels rising from 2022-23 to 2023-24 for both Black students and Hispanic students by 1 percentage point and 7.4 percentage points, respectively.
In science, all demographic groups at ETHS again outperformed their statewide proficiency averages, despite most demographic groups dropping overall in proficiency.
Hispanic students increased in proficiency in science by 5.2 percentage points, for a total of 49.1%, the only demographic group to see growth in science proficiency.
Lower scores for low-income students
Students in the low-income category at ETHS, defined as those eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, record lower proficiency levels than other demographic groups at the high school and their own demographic group’s state averages in most subjects. At ETHS, 37% of all students are low-income (1,287 total students).
Low-income students also dropped in proficiency in every subject from 2022-23 to 2023-24.
In ELA, low-income students in 2023-24 performed lower than any other demographic group at ETHS, lower than state averages for low-income students, and dropped in overall proficiency by 1.1 percentage points.
Low-income students didn’t fare any better in math. Like ELA, low-income students performed lower than any other demographic group, lower than state averages for low-income students and dropped in overall proficiency by 1.2 percentage points.
In 2022-23, low-income students at ETHS did perform better than statewide averages. A drop in ETHS student proficiency and a rise in state levels this year means that is no longer the case.
Low-income students do fare a bit better in science proficiency historically, consistent with the high school’s record of achieving higher proficiency levels in science compared with ELA and math. Science proficiency did drop by 4.6 percentage points, but remains above state averages for low-income students.
Footnotes:
[1] Historically many researchers have agreed that standardized tests are biased. Whether the standardized tests currently being administered are biased is an important question that deserves a close look.
In recent years, there has been extensive research of certain standardized tests, particularly college admission tests, to evaluate whether they are biased. Three extensive studies of the SAT concluded that the test did not contain bias against Black or Hispanic students, but rather it over-predicted how Black students would perform in the first year of college. An article about the studies is available here.
In addition, a recent study conducted by the Task Force of California University Academic Council found that standardized test scores aid in predicting student success metrics in college, and are even better predictors for those who are Underrepresented Minority students (URMs), who are first-generation, or whose families are low-income.
[2] The Illinois Report Card also recognizes the racial/ethnic demographics of American Indian, MENA and Pacific Islander, but if a student group has fewer than 10 students, no information is displayed.
Analysis: ETHS test data shows stagnant scores, persistent disparities is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.