Eye On Illinois: Annual statewide school report card chock full of interesting numbers

Numbers tell a story, but rarely without help.

The Illinois State Board of Education Wednesday released its annual statewide school report card. It’s almost a crushing amount of data, which is to be expected with 866 districts operating 3,835 schools teaching 1,851,290 students – 14% of our overall population.

The information is available at illinoisreportcard.com, along with historical data from 2006 through 2020, all available at the individual district level. The state-level figures are interesting but the tool probably is more widely useful for people wanting to look into local districts, either as parents, taxpayers or both.

One writer has no business telling any reader how to perceive these numbers, micro or macro, but I do encourage taking the plunge. Then pay attention when people cite the data, whether they be elected leaders and candidates or teachers and administrators.

There are so many individual bits of information poured into the formulas to create the card – far beyond just standardized testing – that it’s impossible to get unanimous agreement on what the figures do or should mean. But if more people try to understand methods, trends and benchmarks that increases the possibilities for using the report as fuel for continued improvement.

READING LIST: Capitol News Illinois does much great work, but Andrew Adams warrants a special commendation for Wednesday’s breakdown of the current campaign finance cycle (tinyurl.com/24CampaignCash), which already has seen $633 million spent, including $148 million on advertising, staff and events. All told, more than $1 billion moved around from Nov. 9, 2022, through Oct. 15, 2024.

The piece is remarkably useful for people who want to add a layer or two to their understanding of power levels within and outside the General Assembly: who writes the checks, how power balances affect parties and a few individual races and more. But perhaps my favorite part was the end, a “How we reported this” explainer.

CNI used data the political campaigns report to the State Board of Elections, and the methodology notes reveal a media outlet that both understands the challenges of navigating a murky system and the importance of being honest with readers about specific steps taken in pursuit of useful reporting.

“Because there were 350,000 individual donations this cycle from over 36,000 entities, we checked a random sampling of our data and found that 99.5% of the changes we made were correct with a 3% margin of error and 99% confidence. We also hand-checked that all the committees named in the story were correctly coded. We stand by our approach, but you should keep in mind that for Illinois races, even the best campaign finance data can be messy and imperfect.”

Such disclosures go far in developing trust with an audience.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.