School Report Cards 2008

Background Information

School Report Cards were developed with the intention of providing information about academic performance and characteristics of students, faculty, instructional resources, and finances at the school, district, and State level. Report Cards are prepared by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) based on data received from and about schools at various points throughout the school year. According to Illinois School Code, School Report Cards are to be forwarded to the schools from the ISBE and made available by the schools to their publics by October 31. No information on the Report Card can be modified. The only supplementary information that can be added to the Report Card as delivered by the ISBE is a statement of school improvement, which is placed on the back page of the multi-page document.

Additional Information

Approximately one year ago, District 211 administration notified the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) that there was reason to believe that the 2007 Prairie State Achievement Examination (PSAE), featured on last year’s report card, contained inaccurate and unreliable data. Since that time, numerous telephone conversations, meetings with ISBE officials including State Superintendent Koch, and presentations to the State Board of Education have occurred involving District 211 Board members, principals, central office staff, and the superintendent. These meetings and subsequent investigations have served to solidify District 211's belief that the PSAE is, by its very design, an inaccurate assessment of state standards. District 211 has documented the inadequacies of this assessment design in these conversations, focusing upon the misapplication of the normed-referenced ACT and WorkKeys examinations to measure achievement in a criterion-referenced system. This misapplication forms a basis of the District's appeal of all PSAE scores, officially submitted on September 30, 2008 to the State Board of Education.

Results were additionally distorted by the use of the PSAE in 2008 to evaluate Limited English Proficient students. The ISBE adopted this practice in 2008 in response to federal rejection of the IMAGE test, used in past years to measure achievement of students who are new to the English language. As was reported earlier to the Board of Education, the use of the vocabulary-intensive PSAE for this subgroup further erodes confidence in the reliability of the PSAE scores reported in the attached documents.

To view the individual report cards go to the School Report Cards links page

Link to PSAE Appeal