Illinois Report Card for District 186: Low attendance holds back school performance

District 186 graduation rates are returning to pre-pandemic levels, but the district continues to struggle with low attendance rates, according to 2024 Illinois Report Card data released Oct 31.

Half of the district’s schools are performing below state standards, and Nicole Nash Moody, assistant superintendent of teaching, learning and school culture, says attendance “makes a huge difference.”

“It makes managing the classroom more difficult,” said Leslie Termine, teacher at Washington Middle. “I think today in one of my classes, I had six kids absent. So just thinking about how I’m going to make sure they get caught up; it’s a lot on teachers.”

When the state measures schools’ performance, chronic absenteeism contributes to 20% of elementary and middle school performance ratings and 10% of high school performance ratings.

“If all of our elementary schools had a focus on chronic absenteeism, our scores would be commendable,” said Terrance Jordan, director of school leadership and family and community engagement for the district.

About 42% of District 186 students were chronically absent this past year, meaning over 5,400 students missed more than 17 days of school with or without an excuse. This was a slight decrease from the previous year but still above the 26% rate at the state level.

“Even for those people who don’t have children in our district, if they see kids out, they need to ask a question: ‘Why aren’t you in school?’ We need it to be a community effort,” said Jordan.

The Illinois report card is released annually from the Illinois State Board of Education and summarizes how schools across the state are progressing on a wide range of educational goals, based on data from the 2023-24 academic year.

Superintendent Jennifer Gill told Illinois Times the district is celebrating an 11% surge in high school graduation rates, increased science proficiency rates and an increase of 275 students enrolled in career and technical education. Fourth grade literacy rates are also slightly up after last year’s concern over low proficiency, as previously reported by Illinois Times.

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High SAT scores and the number of freshmen on track to graduate dropped across the district.

Illinois Times examined some of the report card statistics and what they mean to the district, according to community voices and experts.

Continued attendance issues after the pandemic

All absences, whether unexcused or excused, count towards chronic absenteeism. This includes mental health days, sick days, suspensions and more.

“During COVID it became okay to stay at home when you were sick and had a symptom,” said Gill. “It’s not that we want kids to come to school not feeling well, but we really need our kids in school.”

Gill says local businesses also adapted to hiring students during the school day when classes were remote during the pandemic.

And when students are late to school or leave early by a few hours it counts as a half-day absence for that student, which counts against attendance, Gill says.

Aaron Graves, president of the union representing teachers – Springfield Education Association – says district buses are routinely not getting kids to school on time.

“It makes the beginning of the school day difficult because you don’t want to start something and then half the class misses and then have to turn around and repeat it,” said Termine, who is the vice president of SEA.

Gill says dozens of students are missing school because they have not submitted immunization or physical health records, despite the district offering free immunization clinics. After Oct. 15, all students without these documents are excluded from school.

Termine says Washington Middle has the highest number of office discipline referrals in the district, which she says also adds to the number of students out of class. Washington has the highest percentage of chronic absenteeism – at 66%.

“It definitely makes it hard to meet expectations and to teach with efficiency,” said Termine.

Post-pandemic, Gill says there’s a need for increased social-emotional learning and a community effort to keep kids in school.

“It’s our goal, we want to know those students by face and name so when we don’t see them, we start asking questions,” said Jordan.

Elementary and middle literacy: curriculum “vibe” more positive

Last February, Illinois Times reported low reading proficiency among District 186 fourth graders, according to last year’s report card. The Springfield Education Association blamed the Calkins curriculum and advocated for more phonics awareness.

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This past year, District 186 elementary schools started training teachers on phonemic awareness in preparation for the state’s new literacy plan passed last January.

“I remember the first year of Lucy Calkins (curriculum), and it was doomsday. From the beginning, it was overwhelming,” said Termine. “But I feel like the vibe from this curriculum is maybe a little bit more positive.”

Elementary and middle school reading proficiency rates in the district are three percentage points up from 2023, at about 26%. This number barely trails the district’s pre-pandemic proficiency rate of about 27% but lags the state’s literacy rate of 41.2%.

Illinois school superintendent Tony Sanders partially attributes literacy success at the state level to the Illinois comprehensive literacy plan.

But Gill says it’s too early to know if the state’s plan contributed to the improvement.

“I can’t imagine we’re going to see the biggest realization in one year, but I think over two or three years, we can expect that,” said Gill.

While not mandatory, the state’s plan is a helpful guideline and can help bolster literacy throughout grade levels after the tools are utilized in early elementary, according to Gill.

SEA’s Graves worries about the students who did not receive this new curriculum in early years.

“Teachers are telling me this new curriculum is very challenging, and kids are missing a lot of those building blocks because they didn’t have them along the way,” said Graves. “It’s important to understand the critical pieces of literacy so that you can identify what kids are missing.”

By this January, the state is required under 2023 state legislation to develop and make training opportunities available for teaching reading that are aligned with the state’s new literacy plan.

Reading rates also vary among schools and student groups. About 13.4% of Black students and about 16% of low-income students were proficient in reading, according to Illinois Assessment of Readiness scores. About 7% of English learners, about 5% of unhoused students and about 8% of “youth in care” are reading proficient.

“There’s no real achievement gap. It is an opportunity and resource gap,” said Moody.

Math scores “not up as much as we’d like to see”

In comparison with reading scores, elementary and middle school math scores appear stagnant.

About 17% of elementary and middle school students in the district met or exceeded proficiency in math this year, which is seven percentage points behind pre-pandemic levels. About 28.4% of students across the state were proficient in math this year.

“Math scores were not up as much as we’d like to see, and we have to take accountability as teachers,” said Graves. “But it’s a team effort.”

Teachers need more professional development targeted at the missing deficits, according to Graves. Tina Freeman, Jefferson Middle School teacher, says schools with lower state performance need more diversity and classroom management training.

“There are teachers out here who don’t want to build relationships with kids,” said Freeman. “There are teachers who have anxiety and don’t have a handle on it, and they’re dealing with kids.”

Intensive schools, categorized in the state’s lowest designation, were all below 5% math proficient. About 0.7% of Feitshans elementary students were proficient in math.

Overall, in the district, unhoused students had the lowest math proficiency percentage at 3.7%. A bit above these students, “youth in care” tested at about 4% proficient, and Black students tested at about 4.6% proficiency.

District 186 schools are in their second year of the district’s new math curriculum.

After this year’s report card data, Illinois education officials plan to launch a new statewide initiative to boost math scores.

“This will be the first-of-its-kind effort here in the state of Illinois,” said Sanders the state superintendent. “As a state, we adopted new learning standards for math in 2010, but there’s never been a concerted statewide effort to provide support to educators in understanding and implementing these shifts in instruction.”

Graduation rates up but high school proficiency down

Graduate rates at all three high schools met or topped pre-pandemic levels. Lanphier High School had the biggest growth from the previous year but remained largely behind the other two district high schools.

“If you look at the oldest report card data available (2006), you will find that graduation rates at Lanphier have consistently lagged behind Springfield and Southeast,” said Micah Miller, District 186 school board president. “I don’t know how we have a phenomenon where one school can chronically be performing behind its counterparts for decades.”

But while graduation rates increased, the percentage of freshmen on track to graduate decreased in two out of three district high schools. Lanphier High School scores dropped the most, and Southeast High School remained stagnant.

“A lot goes into that ninth-grade year, and we’re working on not only the academics but the social-emotional pieces,” said Moody, the assistant superintendent of teaching, learning and school culture.

Moody says this measure excludes summer school effort, when students can make up lost credits. And Sarah Blissett, school board member representing sub-district three, wants the report card to also show how other grade years track for graduation.

“Just because your ninth graders might be on track, that doesn’t mean that they don’t fall off,” said Blissett. “Not only do we need to increase our ninth graders on track, but we need to make sure that our 10th through 12th graders are also staying on track.”

High school proficiency in both reading and math, measured by SAT scores, also dropped this year.

About 15% of high schoolers were proficient in math, compared to about 22% before the pandemic. And about 23% of high schoolers were proficient in reading, compared to about 26% in 2019. Both scores also decreased a few percentage points from 2023.

In District 186, about 3% of Black students were proficient in math this year, and 0% of high school English learners who took the SAT were proficient in English language arts.

“In terms of test scores, there may have been an overemphasis on test prep rather than on achieving year over year gains for every single student,” said Sanders.

Next year, Sanders says ISBE plans to conduct growth measures for high schools like it does for elementary and middle schools.

The state will also be testing students on the ACT (standardized college admissions test) instead of the SAT. Gill says the district bought ACT books for students and is providing practice ACT exams.

Already “thinking about next year”

“Once you get your test scores, you’re already thinking about next year,” said Gill. “The second we get the test, we start preparing and planning for the next one.”

Miller, the school board president, supports the district in expanding trade pathways.

“One solution that I see is by removing the stigma of students who see their pathway to success in the trades rather than a college education,” said Miller. “There is zero shame in a livelihood that provides an excellent wage, benefits and pension.”

Similarly, Termine says schools need more exciting electives.

“We don’t really have these invigorating electives that really get kids excited to come to school,” said Termine.

And Jordan wants more exciting programs like the new volunteer program, Real Men Read.

“We’re doing everything we can possibly think of to improve our environments physically and culturally,” said Jordan.

It might take a village.

“It’s not just on the teachers, and it’s not just on the administration giving training to the teachers. It’s not just the parents, it’s not just the students, it’s all of us,” said Freeman.

Addison Wright is a UIS grad student in the Public Affairs Reporting program. Wright graduated from UNC Asheville last spring with a double major in mass communications and political science. She covered local politics in Nashville, Tennessee, and food insecurity and higher education in North Carolina.

Cador Jones has a mass communication bachelor’s degree from UNC Asheville. He’s an arts and features audio/print writer with experience researching and publishing for a music literature podcast, Rock is Lit.

This article appears in Low attendance holds back school performance.