Oak Park ESD 97 sees growth but notes proficiency threshold changes complicate comparisons

An administrative presenter identified in the meeting as Anna reviewed the district's Illinois report card metrics, calling out three report-card domains the state evaluates  student learning, learning conditions and elevating educators  and noting the district's strengths and areas for attention.

Anna said the district's schools earned designations of either exemplary or commendable. She flagged that the state changed proficiency thresholds this year, which prevents direct historic comparisons on the public report card. "One of the things that happened this year for the first time ... is that the state changed the thresholds, for what determines proficiency," she said, adding that the district applied the old thresholds to preliminary state data and found it exceeded its ELA goals and met math goals under the old cut scores.

The presentation summarized peer comparisons: using a newly selected set of peer districts, the district is about five percentage points behind peers in ELA and seven points behind in math under the new thresholds. At the same time, the presenter highlighted student growth percentiles as an apples-to-apples metric over time and said that, for the first time in recent years, all racial/ethnic groups registered average student growth percentiles at or above the statewide median of 50 in both ELA and math.

Board members asked for clarity about how peer districts were chosen, whether proficiency gains are driven by threshold changes and how district goals will incorporate disaggregation and long-term plans to close gaps. One board member urged the district to pair growth and proficiency goals with disaggregated targets and asked that the district clearly state what the district, as educational experts, attributes to the measures presented.

Administrators acknowledged nuance across demographic groups, highlighted improvements in some areas and said they would continue to analyze disaggregated trends and program impacts. No formal board action was taken on the report-card presentation at the meeting.