CHICAGO (July 17, 2024) – The Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative today released three reports on learning renewal, reflecting the first comprehensive study of post-pandemic outcomes and practices in the state of Illinois.
National studies have demonstrated that Illinois has performed well relative to other states in the post-pandemic recovery period. These new reports explore the factors underpinning this success, as well as areas for continued investment and growth going forward.
Key findings include:
- Academic recovery looks different by grade and by subject area.
- In grades three to eight, 24% of Illinois districts are back to pre-pandemic levels in English language arts on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, with 22% back to pre-pandemic levels in math.
- In high schools, 25% of Illinois districts are back to pre-pandemic levels in SAT reading scores, while only 15% are back to pre-pandemic levels on SAT math.
- Elementary and middle school students’ test scores have rebounded significantly, while high school test scores continue to decline.
- Math recovery lags recovery in English language arts across the board.
- Positive post-pandemic growth has not caught up to widening disparities.
- Historically marginalized groups have recovered more quickly than other groups, but they also lost more ground initially, resulting in greater overall disparities.
- Districts that spent more time in remote learning, which often had high concentrations of Black, Latino and low-income learners, are still furthest from their pre-pandemic performance.
- Only a small percentage of students who left the Illinois public school system during COVID-19 have returned.
- Well over 30% of Black, Latino and high school students are chronically absent, threatening the positive strides in academic progress.
IWERC also found that districts invested emergency federal funding heavily in five categories during the pandemic and post-pandemic periods: improvement of physical buildings; improvement of infrastructure for teaching and learning; enhancement of academic, pedagogical and social-emotional learning experiences; stipends for school personnel; and wellness and safety.
“Illinois schools have a lot to be proud of in learning renewal. Students in elementary and middle school are clearly rebounding, a testament to the efforts of school leaders, teachers and communities,” said IWERC Director Meg Bates. “However, we can’t let up now. Supporting schools in addressing absenteeism and high school recovery are clear areas of need.”
“Many historically marginalized student groups have made incredible progress since the pandemic; however, they lost so much ground initially that they are not yet caught up,” said Mariana Barragan Torres, principal investigator of the learning renewal project. “As emergency federal funding ends, it is important to support districts in continuing the services and programs that were promoting learning recovery for these important student groups.”
The three reports examine student outcomes including test scores, enrollment and absenteeism; K-12 district spending of emergency federal funding for COVID-19 response; and K-12 district practices for learning renewal as reported on a survey. Later this summer, IWERC will release a fourth report on the relationship between district emergency federal funding spending and achievement outcomes. The 2024 reports are available here.
While these reports are the first taking a comprehensive and data-centric approach to examining Illinois learning renewal in the post-pandemic era, IWERC researchers previously studied the effects of the pandemic on student learning in Illinois. Reports on learning modalities in the 2020-21 school year are available here.