It’s that time of year again. Data from last spring’s Illinois State Standards tests (ISAT) - taken by every third through eighth grader – have arrived in Community Consolidated School District 15.  

As reported at this week’s school board meeting, the vast majority of students are meeting or exceeding state standards in reading (85.7 percent) and math (96.1 percent). The goal of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation is for all students to meet or exceed its state’s standards by 2014.  

For 2011, Illinois set a goal of 85 percent. Next spring it climbs to 92.5 percent. 

But how challenging are these exams? And how do they compare to national exams? 

A recent Wall Street Journal article, “States Fail to Raise Bar in Reading, Math Tests,” reported on data released by the U.S. Department of Education this week. The report states although eight states have raised their standards for passing elementary-school math and reading tests, those states and most others still fall below national benchmarks. 

Care to guess where Illinois falls? Ten points below the cut off for Basic performance in reading and math.

As outlined in the article, the data help explain the disconnect between the relatively high pass rates on many state tests and the low scores on national exams. It says the report from the National Center for Education Statistics is certain to reinvigorate calls to overall NCLB.

Critics of the federal education law, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, contend states watered down their exams to meet the law’s requirement that 100 percent of students taking state math and reading exams are passing by 2014. 

Just this week, Duncan promised to relax the 100 percent rule if states adopt higher academic standards and adopt other education overhauls he favors.

What will Illinois do? More importantly, what will D-15 do now to prepare its students?

The government’s report certainly explains how for the past several years D-15’s eighth graders overwhelmingly met state standards in reading and math yet more than 40 percent failed to meet benchmarks on the ACT-aligned EXPLORE test. 

The test is used as a high school entrance exam and subject areas tested are English, mathematics, reading and science. The scores, along with a student’s current academic performance, are used to determine their freshman year course placement. 

Truly exceptional school districts do not set low standards for their students. They set higher goals and strive to reach them. It's never easy – goals shouldn’t be easy.

During Wednesday's school board meeting Superintendent Scott Thompson spoke of setting new student performance targets during a retreat next week with the Board of Education.

He said “one of the things we really want to start looking at is our EXPLORE tests . . .  we want to continue to increase those scores to make sure the kids are ready for the academics of high school.” 

And the faster D-15 can do that the easier it will be for Township High School District 211 to improve student ACT scores – a truer indicator of college-readiness than current Illinois state standards.