If you’ve ever watched the high jump event in track and field, you know they raise the bar a little at a time to determine who can clear the greatest height without knocking the bar to the ground.
It’s exhilarating to watch each athlete rise to the challenge.
Now imagine if they did it in reverse, lowering the bar in each round so everyone feels good about their performance and gets awarded a medal. It would spare some frustration and disappointment, but it also would defeat the entire purpose of the event — and no one would ever improve.
The same principle applies in education. If we keep lowering expectations to create the illusion of success, we fail the very students we claim to be helping.
According to state education officials, Illinois currently has “some of the highest proficiency benchmarks in the nation.” Yet instead of keeping that bar high or even raising it, they’re proposing reworking the state’s benchmarking system because it “unfairly mislabels students.”
State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders recently proposed that Illinois lower its state assessment standards to “provide us with more accurate data.”
Lowering the standards doesn’t make the scores more accurate. It sends the wrong signal to students and creates misinformation for parents and educators that results in more students falling through the cracks.
This is part of a troubling trend picking up steam across the country. In 2024, Oklahoma and Wisconsin revised their academic standards by lowering the passing scores on their state tests. As a result, students this year were not required to demonstrate the same level of mastery as those in previous years. This change means that some students who would have previously been identified as needing additional support are now considered to be meeting expectations. Oklahoma realized the folly in lowering the bar and recently reversed course to reinstate higher expectations.
According to the Nation’s Report Card, a biannual assessment of math and reading administered to students in every state, Illinois needs to commit to more rigorous standards, not weaken them. This year’s scores showed stagnant or declining results in the number of fourth grade students able to score at or above proficient for math and reading. By lowering expectations on state assessments, the number of students listed as below, at or above proficient could look wildly different than the scores reported by National Assessment of Educational Progress.
This is what is known as an “honesty gap.” It’s an active choice to fudge proficiency scores because state leaders believe they’re unfair.
Lowering expectations for students in Illinois will only widen the honesty gap between state-reported performance and how students actually compare to their peers nationwide, leaving them unprepared for the realities they’ll face after graduation. That’s the most unfair thing we can do to our students.
Numerous studies have shown a strong connection between reading achievement and long-term outcomes, such as college enrollment and lifetime earnings.
Similarly, a recent Urban Institute study found that raising math scores by just 0.5 standard deviations for students up to age 12 led to greater increases in earnings by age 30 than any other factor examined.
We don’t want our students to be unprepared for the academic or professional challenges they will face after K-12 education. This is why Illinois should instead look to bolster current standards with more comprehensive policy solutions that will support students where they are: promoting and challenging those who are testing above proficiency and providing rapid evidence-based interventions and support to those who are testing below proficiency in an effort to bring them up to speed.
Illinois policymakers just voted to give more than $300 million in additional funding to public schools. Billions of dollars in new spending has been allocated since we passed historic school funding reform in 2017, yet accountability continues to be eroded. Taxpayers deserve to know whether that additional funding leads to students improving in meaningful, measurable ways. Consistently high standards are the only way to ensure that.
It might feel good in the short term to see more students clear the bar, but those same students are likely to wind up more disadvantaged in the long run because they won’t get the support they need to make real improvement.
Bruce Rauner was the 42nd governor of Illinois.
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