This year, 17% of District 65’s students are entitled to receive supplemental services and supports in the form of an Individualized Education Program (IEP) tailored to the student’s needs and challenges. While the total number of District 65 students has declined by 22% since 2018, the number of students with an IEP has declined by only 3%.
District 65 goals for its students with an IEP include: increase the amount of time students with an IEP spend in general classrooms and increase their academic achievement. The district reports some progress toward meeting each of those goals.
Last year, 71% of the district’s students who had an IEP spent 80% or more of their time in a general classroom. Academically, the good news was qualified.
On the 2024 Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR), a higher percentage of District 65 students with an IEP met expectations in both English Language Arts (ELA) and math than in the prior year. In addition, on the ELA portion of the test, a higher percentage met expectations in 2024 than in 2019, the last test given before the COVID pandemic. But very high percentages of students with an IEP did not meet expectations in ELA and math on the 2024 IAR.
Perhaps one bright spot is that the percentages of students with an IEP who are in the bottom two performance levels of the IAR have been decreasing, indicating that students are being pushed up from those lower levels of achievement — even if they are still falling short of meeting expectations.
A. Enrollment of students with an IEP
District 65’s total student enrollment, including pre-K through eighth grade, has declined by 1,750 students since 2018, but the number of District 65 students with an IEP has declined by only 36 students during that same period. This year, the district has 1,050 students with an IEP, which accounts for 17% of the district’s total enrollment. The table below shows the trends.
B. Percentage in each disability category
The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) has defined 14 categories of disabilities. Eighty-five percent of the district’s students fall into one of five categories: emotional disability, autism, speech and language impairment, development delay and specific learning disability. Fifteen percent of the district’s students fall into other categories, including visual impairment, traumatic brain injury, deafness, hearing impairment, intellectual disability, multiple disabilities and orthopedic impairment.
The chart below shows the percentage of District 65 students who have an IEP and who are in the five main categories.
C. Percentage of time spent in general education classrooms
School districts must legally maintain a continuum of services for students with an IEP. This continuum may include resource classrooms, self-contained specialized classrooms and special schools. Federal law requires that students with IEPs be placed to the maximum extent appropriate with children who are not disabled in general classrooms. A recent article published in the RoundTable summarizes trends in the continuum of services provided by District 65.
District 65 has been focusing on increasing the percentage of its students with IEPs who spend at least 80% of their time in the general classroom.
The chart below shows the percentage of the district’s students with IEPs whose educational environment was classified into one of four settings:
- 80% or more of time spent in a general classroom with their non-disabled peers,
- 40-79% of time in a general classroom,
- Less than 40% of time in a general classroom, and
- In a separate facility.
The data shows that between 2019 and 2024, the percentage of District 65 students with an IEP who spent 80% or more of their time in the general classroom increased from 66% to 71%, or by 5%. The percentage of students spending between 40% and 79% of their time in the general classroom declined by 5%.
D. Results on the IAR, 2019 and 2021-24
ISBE began administering the IAR in 2019, in compliance with the federal Every Child Succeeds Act. The test, with one exception, has been administered in the spring of each year. The results for the 2024 IAR were released on Oct. 30. *
The test assesses whether students are meeting the Illinois Learning Standards in ELA and math, and it measures how well school districts and communities are doing in preparing students for college and careers.
There are five performance levels for the IAR:
• Level 5: Exceeded expectations
• Level 4: Met expectations
• Level 3: Approached expectations
• Level 2: Partially met expectations
• Level 1: Did not yet meet expectations.
ISBE says that students who met or exceeded expectations “have demonstrated readiness for the next grade level/course, and, ultimately, are likely on track for college and careers.”
(In this article, the group of students “meeting expectations” includes both those who met and those who exceeded expectations.)
Percentage meeting expectations on the IAR
The chart below shows 1) the percentages of all District 65 students and 2) the percentages of District 65 students with an IEP, who met expectations on the 2019 and 2021-24 IAR in English Language Arts (ELA) and math.
The 2019 IAR was the last test given before the COVID-19 pandemic. The IAR was not given in 2020 due to the pandemic. The declines shown in 2021 are attributed to the pandemic.
The chart shows that, for all District 65 students, there was a steady increase in the percentage of students who met expectations since 2021. For students with an IEP, the trend has been uneven.
But in 2024, 15% of students with an IEP met expectations on the IAR, compared to 10% in 2019. For math, 12% met expectations on the 2024 IAR, compared to 13% in 2019.
The converse of the data is that in 2024, 85% of students with an IEP did not meet expectations in ELA. The percentage is 88% in math. According to ISBE, these students are not ready for the next grade level and not likely on track to college and careers.
Higher percentages of District 65 students are meeting expectations than students statewide. On the 2024 IAR:
- In ELA, 15% of District 65 students with an IEP met expectations, compared to 11% statewide.
- In math, 12% of District 65 students with an IEP met expectations, compared to 8% statewide.
A look at the bottom two performance levels
The chart below shows the percentage of students with an IEP who scored in the bottom two performance levels in ELA and math on the 2021–2024 IAR tests.
In ELA, the percentage decreased from 83% to 64%, meaning that significantly fewer percentages were scoring in the bottom two performance levels; and conversely, a significantly higher percentage were scoring in the top three performance levels.
In math, the percentage scoring in the bottom two performance levels decreased from 81% to 70%.
While high percentages of students with an IEP are still scoring in the bottom two levels, it appears that progress is being made in moving students out of those lower levels.
Trends at grades three, five and eight
The chart below shows the percentages of third, fifth and eighth graders with an IEP who scored in the top three performance levels in ELA and math on the 2023 and 2024 IAR. These students approached, met or exceeded expectations.
On the 2024 IAR, there was an upward trend from third to fifth to eighth grades in ELA. For math, though, there was a downward trend.
On the 2023 IAR, there were similar trends to those in 2024 except for the eighth grade ELA.
The 2024 data suggests there are gains being made between third and fifth and eighth grades in ELA, but losses in math.
Growth percentiles are below average
The IAR provides growth percentiles that show the growth of students relative to the growth of other students in the state who had a similar scale score in the preceding school year(s).
A growth percentile score may range from 1 to 99, with higher numbers representing higher growth and lower numbers representing lower growth.
ISBE says a student growth percentile of 50 means the student is in the 50th percentile: 50% of students had less gain in scores over time, and 50% had a greater gain in scores over time. A score of 50 represents typical (or average) growth.
On the 2024 IAR, the growth percentile of the district’s students with an IEP was 46.2 in ELA, and 44.4 in math — both lower than the state average of 50.
At a school board meeting on Sept. 16, Superintendent Angel Turner said that going forward, the district will plan to “deliver high quality individualized education services in a more cost-effective manner.” She said the district will conduct an audit of the following areas to determine the best way to support students with an IEP: staffing, scheduling, programming, continuum of services, transportation and optimization of obtaining reimbursement from the state.
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*ISBE also administers Dynamic Learning Maps™ (DLM) alternative assessments, which ISBE says ”offer students with significant cognitive disabilities a way to show what they know and can do in a manner which differs from the traditional multiple-choice tests. Assessments are based on a learning map—a map that shows different paths a student might take to learn new academic skills.”
Academic progress for students with an IEP at District 65 is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.