Key Points 

The 2025 Illinois Report Card data was just released, and it includes “new aligned performance levels” for English, math and science tests.

Illinois’ high school graduation rate has hit a 15-year high, as students continue to show academic growth above pre-pandemic levels, state officials announced Thursday with the release of the 2025 Illinois Report Card. 

The state’s four-year graduation rate reached 89%, up 6.2% from 2024. Students recorded progress in other key areas, including an increase in the number of ninth graders on track to graduate and a dip in chronic absenteeism...

Far too often, educators are inundated with data that feels overwhelming, irrelevant, or unhelpful. In Using Data to Improve Schools, nationally recognized expert on school transformation and student achievement Elaine Allensworth offers a framework for understanding the critical properties of data and the tools educators need to focus on the metrics that matter most for student achievement.

This originally was published as an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune. Read the article here.

Chronic absenteeism is the visible tip of a deeper crisis. England’s schools do not only have an attendance problem; we also face an engagement problem. 

Too many young people are voting with their feet because school does not feel designed for them. As the curriculum and assessment review reaches its final stages, this truth must be at its core: curriculum and assessment shape motivation as well as attainment...

Student perceptions and experiences inform a high school’s culture and climate and have a lasting impact on students’ ability to be successful after graduating. As more and more high schools seek to blur the lines between high school, postsecondary, and workforce, educators, administrators, and superintendents need information that captures how high schoolers feel and experience this transition and the support they receive.

This project will update the 2015 Consortium report, Foundations for Young Adult Success, with an updated framework. We will produce a new infographic, as well as a new Research Brief explaining the full revised framework and the research that supports it. These FYAS 2.0 publications will be released in spring 2026.

Ximena Valverde is a Research Assistant for the Learning & Development Group and has supported projects that aim to better understand student experiences and how schools can use the Cultivate tool to guide school improvement. She is currently a joint BA/MA student at the University of Chicago, where she plans to receive a BA in Public Policy with a minor in Education and Society, and an MA in Sociology. Her main research interests are urban education, immigration policies, student motivation, and adolescent development.