D161 Unveils State Report Card: How Did It Do?

Just like its students, Illinois school districts are graded and assessed. And that means report cards.

will release its state report card online on its website later today, but Patch spoke with Interim Superintendent Barb Rains about the report and some of its assessments. 

Rains said she there were a lot of positives in the report, especially when it came to state testing. The percent of D161 students meeting or exceeding on all state standardized tests increased from 91 percent to 92.1 percent between the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years. Those percentages are well above the state's, which were 76.4 percent and 76.5, respectively.

"I believe our teachers are very committed to providing the best education possible within our budget constraints," she said. "Our overall percentages of students meeting and exceeding the Illinois learning standards continues to increase."

Adequate Yearly Progress

D161 did not meet its Adequate Yearly Progress goals, the academic standards that school districts are held to as part of the No Child Left Behind Act. The reason: The level of achievement in reading for students with disabilities was not met. The district met its AYP in all other areas.

"When we look at it in greater detail, it boiled down to the scores of nine students," Rains said, adding that failing to meet AYP by such a slight margin can be frustrating. "Until the system changes, we're bound by those regulations, and we're making the best of them as best we can. Bottom line, we're moving our students forward."

Spending Compared to State Averages

For the most part, the district's spending matches pretty closely with the state's averages. Take payroll, for instance:

But that's not the case when it comes to other spending areas, such as the other expenditures category: 

Dean Gerdes, the district's director of business and finance, said he wasn't sure why there was such discrepancy in that area's percentages because he is unaware of how the state accounts for spending in that category. That spending area could include one-time expenditures, such as remodeling, that don't reflect an overall spending trend for the district, he added.

Also, other districts might classify their spending in that area differently than D161, making it such a broad category that it would be hard to make accurate comparisons, Gerdes said. 

Other Report Card Data

Additional information of note from the report card includes:

Student-to-Staff Ratio

• D161: 19.7
• State: 18.8

Average Class Size

Patch will continue to look at the district's report card over the coming weeks. Do you have questions about the assessment? Leave them in our comments section, and we'll do our best to address them.