Illinois releases its school report card every year at the end of October, and the data presented can help you and your PTA understand what is happening in your district and in your child’s school. This year, because of the pandemic, there are a lot of exceptions noted on the school report card, but there is still … Continue reading The 2020 Illinois School Report Card: What’s New and What’s Missing
Play the Fund Education Instead Game
Schools are underfunded, both here in Illinois and across the nation. You probably already knew that. Now a new online game called Fund Education Instead from the Partnership for the Future of Learning and the National Education Policy Center seeks to highlight that this underfunding is not a fact of life, but a result of the choices our elected leaders make … Continue reading Play the Fund Education Instead Game
Current EBF School Funding Will Never Get Us to Adequately Funded Education
Illinois PTA strongly supported the passage in 2017 of the new Evidence-Based Funding (EBF) formula that directs additional school funding to those districts most in need. As part of that new formula, the legislature committed to increasing school funding by $350 million per year for 10 years. The results from the first two years of … Continue reading Current EBF School Funding Will Never Get Us to Adequately Funded Education
What’s New with the Illinois School Report Card
The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) released its annual school report card last week. There is one significant change to the report card this year as more of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) goes into effect: site-specific expenditure reporting. That means that the school report card now shows the federal and state/local funding … Continue reading What’s New with the Illinois School Report Card