Illinois Students Are Struggling. Lowering Standards Masks the Crisis.

As students struggle to meet reading proficiency standards, Illinois’ education leaders face a choice: emulate Mississippi and introduce policies to help more students read at grade level, or imitate Wisconsin and lower proficiency standards to mask the literacy crisis.

According to newly released data for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, just 30% of fourth graders in Illinois were proficient in reading in 2024. When 2 in 3 fourth graders cannot meet proficiency standards, you’ve got a crisis which lawmakers shouldn’t ignore. Illinois leaders must pass evidence-based literacy legislation to help students master foundational reading skills. 

ExcelinEd reported Illinois only has one of the eighteen reading policies deemed fundamental for a comprehensive approach to improving reading outcomes.  Lower elementary students need to master foundational literacy skills to be successful learners. When children aren’t reading proficiently by the end of third grade, they are four times more likely to drop out. That’s why Illinois must pursue evidence-based literacy reforms. Mississippi provides a useful model.

In 2013, Mississippi state lawmakers passed legislation establishing evidence-based policies to address its worst-in-the-nation rates of early reading proficiency. The results have been impressive: Mississippi now has the 17th highest fourth grade reading proficiency rate in the nation. It joined only 10 states in 2024 to improve its rate from the previous assessment. 

There are a few practical steps Illinois lawmakers and educators can take to experience similar results to Mississippi. First, school districts should provide universal reading screenings to every lower elementary student to identify reading problems early. Schools should then provide individualized reading interventions to help students with reading struggles meet grade-level reading standards by the end of the school year and mitigate the harms when students struggle to read fall behind in school.

Illinois should also enact legislation to better engage parents in their child’s reading instruction by requiring schools to notify parents if their child is struggling with reading and engage them in their child’s reading interventions. Schools should also collaborate with parents to determine student placement, particularly in the critical transition from third to fourth grade. It should empower parents to be decision-makers alongside teachers. 

Finally, it’s important for Illinois to get down to the basics for reading instruction. Many states have passed legislation to align reading instruction with evidence-based practices called the “science of reading” and experienced improvement in student literacy. These practices include a focus on the five essential components of effective reading instruction such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary development and reading comprehension. 

With improved reading policies and a back-to-basics approach to reading instruction, Illinois can improve. But not if it follows the example of neighboring Wisconsin where lawmakers lowered the state standards to hide struggling students behind inflated proficiency rates. 

Wisconsin lowered its bar for proficiency between 2023 and 2024 and experienced a 12% drop in the number of students scoring at the lowest level of proficiency on state assessments. Since the pandemic, at least four other states have lowered their proficiency benchmarks in reading and math, effectively applying cosmetics to unattractive proficiency rates.

Eight Illinois education organizations recommended the same for Illinois. As one of only two states whose proficiency standards still align to the national assessment’s standards, they argue, Illinois is at a disadvantage. Besides, its students meet proficiency on NAEP at nearly the same rate as the national average, and this should be enough to satisfy the status quo. But being average in a nation that is lackluster is a low bar when it means just 30% are meeting the assessment’s proficiency standards. 

Instead, Illinois lawmakers can focus on improving reading education for students using five literacy solutions based on proven, evidence-based reforms from states such as Mississippi, where students continue to improve in reading on national assessments.

Illinois families deserve an education they can trust for children. We shouldn’t allow lawmakers to respond to the state’s alarmingly low reading proficiency by loosening their responsibilities and masking the crisis.