RAISING QUALITY PROMOTING EQUITY An analysis of location, performance, and investment in Illinois public schools Strengthening nonprofits and the communities they serve.
PREFACE IFF is a nonprofit community development financial institution (CDFI) that provides comprehensive community development solutions across the Midwest. As part of the organization s mission to strengthen nonprofits and the communities they serve, IFF Research conducts analyses to facilitate strategic planning and resource allocation for states, municipalities, school districts, foundations, and nonprofits throughout the country. Over nearly fifteen years on the cutting edge of school improvement, IFF has developed a signature approach to education research that assesses need for quality K-12 public schools. IFF s school study methodology is distinctive in its spatial analysis of performing capacity at a local level. Its place-based approach helps education stakeholders craft data-driven interventions and maximize the reach of investments. Previous analyses have informed policy and decision-making such as investments in districts and schools, strategic facilities planning and site selection, identification of schools for potential turnarounds, solicitations and selection criteria for charter schools, and targeted communication regarding public school options. IFF s education needs assessments evolved out of a partnership with Chicago Public Schools (CPS). In 2003, CPS leaders recognized a need to identify neighborhoods to prioritize for the location of new performing schools. IFF s research enhanced the district s ability to target its school improvement efforts and led to a better distribution of K-12 options for families. The needs assessment methodology has evolved and been adapted to guide policy and practice in Cleveland, Denver, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Raising Quality, Promoting Equity is IFF s second statewide school study, following an assessment of Indiana public schools in 2013. Raising Quality, Promoting Equity was conducted by IFF Research with financial support from the Joyce Foundation and from the Walton Family Foundation. The project s advisory committee included representatives from the offices of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), Advance Illinois, the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, New Schools for Chicago, Stand for Children Illinois, Thornton Fractional High School District 215, and Williamsfield Community Unit School District 210. ONLINE TOOL www.iff.org/ilschoolstudy The data visualization suite that accompanies this report allows users to compare schools, districts, and study areas of their choosing with the state and with customizable sets of peers from a variety of perspectives. Users interested in their school, district, or region can see how their outcomes in performance, funding, and return on investment (ROI) stack up to those of nearby places, of demographically similar communities, or of the state as a whole.
RAISING QUALITY PROMOTING EQUITY An analysis of location, performance, and investment in Illinois public schools
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IFF PROJECT STAFF R. Jovita Baber, Ph.D. Vice President of Research and Evaluation Nicholas V. DiRago Research Associate Megan McGowan Data Analyst Jesse Bakker GIS Analyst Katie Coleman Corporate Communications Manager IFF ADVISORY TEAM Joe Neri President and Chief Executive Officer Matt Roth Chief Operating Officer Jose Cerda III Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Susana Vasquez Vice President of Strategic Partnerships Andrew Alt Director of School s Jenny Boyts School s Manager Kiae Considine Director of Resource Development Dennis Marino Senior Project Manager Andrea Poole Director of Lending, School s ADVISORY COMMITTEE Daniel Anello Chief Executive Officer New Schools for Chicago Derek Cantù Policy Analyst Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois Tim Farquer Superintendent and Curriculum Director Williamsfield Community Unit School District 210 Jason Helfer, Ph.D. Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Illinois State Board of Education Thomas McGrath Associate Superintendent and Chief Operating Officer Archdiocese of Chicago Office of Catholic Schools Ginger Ostro Executive Director Advance Illinois Beth Purvis, Ed.D. Secretary of Education Office of the Governor of Illinois Mimi Rodman Executive Director Stand for Children Illinois Evelyn Sanguinetti Lieutenant Governor of Illinois Sara R. Shaw Managing Director and Advisor of Education Policy Office of the Governor of Illinois Creg E. Williams, Ed.D. Superintendent Thornton Fractional High School District 215 Pamela Witmer Senior Manager of Policy Illinois Network of Charter Schools
PEER REVIEWERS Heather Y. Anichini President and Chief Executive Officer The Chicago Public Education Fund Jeff Broom Director of School Quality Measurement Chicago Public Schools Juan Jose Gonzalez Director of Youth and Education Policy City of Chicago Christopher Merrett, Ph.D. Director and Professor Western Illinois University Institute for Rural Affairs Kevin O Mara Executive Director High School District Organization of Illinois Diane Rutledge Executive Director Large Unit District Association Robin M. Steans Trustee Steans Family Foundation Sara Ray Stoelinga, Ph.D. Sara Liston Spurlark Director University of Chicago Urban Education Institute Norman Walzer, Ph.D. Senior Research Scholar Northern Illinois University Center for Governmental Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY... 1 DATA AND METHODS... 5 REFERENCE MAPS AND FIGURES... 9 PART I: NEEDS ASSESSMENT: SCHOOL PERFORMANCE... 16 PART II: DISTRICT FUNDING... 30 PART III: RETURN ON INVESTMENT... 46 RECOMMENDATIONS... 53 DISTRICT PROFILES: BRIGHT SPOTS FOR FUTURE INVESTMENT... 56 IN DEPTH: CHICAGO... 63 APPENDIX A: SUPPLY AND DEMAND BY GRADE LEVEL AND STUDY AREA... 71 APPENDIX B: SCHOOL DISTRICT EXPENDITURE CATEGORIZATION SCHEME... 87 MAPS Map 1: Density of School-Aged Children... 11 Map 2: Children in Poverty... 13 Map 3: Level... 21 Map 4:... 25 Map 5: Funding Adequacy... 39 Map 6: Return on Investment (ROI), Study Areas... 51 Map 7: Level, City of Chicago... 64 Map 8:, City of Chicago... 68 CHARTS Chart 1: Enrolled Students by School Performance... 18 Chart 2: Level in Study Areas... 19 Chart 3: Poverty and Proficiency in Illinois Public School Districts... 27 Chart 4: School Performance by Income Level... 28 Chart 5: Supplemental Funds Needed Per Dollar... 32 Chart 6: Cost Weighting Example... 34 Chart 7: Enrolled Students by Funding Level... 35 Chart 8: Funding Adequacy by Income Level... 36 Chart 9: Weighted Revenue Per Pupil by District Income Level... 36 Chart 10: Funding Adequacy by Geography... 37 Chart 11: Revenue Sources for K-12 Public Education... 41 Chart 12: Income, Wealth, and Revenue for K-12 Education... 42
Chart 13: Instructional Spending and Proficiency... 43 Chart 14: Wealth, Spending, and Performance... 44 Chart 15: Income, Performance, and Return on Investment (ROI)... 47 Chart 16: Return on Investment (ROI) by Funding Adequacy... 49 Chart 17: Overhead Spending by Return on Investment (ROI)... 50 Chart 18: Enrolled Students by School Performance in Elgin-Area School District U-46 vs. Illinois... 57 Chart 19: Student Demographics in Elgin-Area School District U-46... 57 Chart 20: Funding and Wealth in Elgin-Area School District U-46... 58 Chart 21: Student Demographics in Vienna School District 55... 59 Chart 22: Funding and Wealth in Vienna School District 55... 60 Chart 23: Enrolled Students by School Performance in Collinsville School District 10... 61 Chart 24: Student Demographics in Collinsville School District 10... 61 Chart 25: Funding and Wealth in Collinsville School District 10... 62 Chart 26: Enrolled Students by School Performance in Chicago Public Schools... 65 Chart 27: Poverty and Performance in Chicago Public Schools... 66 Chart 28: Student Demographics in Chicago Public Schools... 66 Chart 29: Funding and Wealth in Chicago Public Schools... 70 TABLES Table 1: IFF Performance Rating for Illinois Public Schools, 2013-14... 6 Table 2: Statewide Enrollment Breakdown, 2013-14... 9 Table 3: Supply and Demand by Grade Division, Statewide... 18 Table 4: Supply and Demand by Grade Division, High-Need Areas... 23 Table 5: Supply and Demand by Study Area, Ranked, High-Need Areas... 24 Table 6: Supply and Demand by Grade Division, Chicago... 63 Table 7: Supply and Demand by Grade Division, Chicago, High-Need Areas... 67
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OVERVIEW Seizing the Moment. As the educational landscape evolves in the Prairie State, exciting opportunities are emerging to raise quality and promote equity in Illinois public schools. Over the past several years, standardized assessments have increased in rigor; momentum for school funding reform has picked up; and the state is gaining considerable autonomy over its public schools as the Every Student Succeeds Act takes effect. Illinois s success in transforming these and other opportunities into progress hinges on stakeholders capacity to coalesce around a comprehensive school improvement agenda. Raising Quality, Promoting Equity is designed to facilitate this collaborative process of agenda-setting. At its core, the study is a supply-and-demand needs assessment. In line with statewide goals to promote ninety percent of students to grade level in math and reading by 2032, the analysis identifies the places in Illinois in which the most children cannot access a public school in which all or nearly all students succeed in core subjects. Embedded in this research question is the assumption that every child can learn. Zip code, race, ethnicity, family wealth, first language, or learning style should not diminish access to quality education. To safeguard opportunity for children across Illinois, the public education system must guarantee that all families have a high-quality K-12 school close to home. Boosting Performance to Raise Quality. A high level of academic performance is a necessary, but not sufficient, component of a high-quality school. High-quality schools challenge and support children to realize their potential. They not only transmit basic skills but foster critical thinking, self-understanding, social and emotional learning, cultural competency, citizenship, and wellness. Standardized tests do not measure these vital components of high-quality schools; by the same token, high-quality schools accomplish more than state assessments can capture. As such, high-quality schools do not teach to the test. They teach to the whole child, which allows them to achieve high levels of performance in subjects that standardized tests assess. Yet even in the context of holistic, whole-child education, solid training in reading and math is a foundational function of K-12 schooling. Students, families, and taxpayers depend on this training to build a skilled workforce that can participate in the economy and attract investment. If many children cannot access schools that will prepare them to achieve in reading and math, increasing the availability of grade-level preparation in these subjects should be a top priority for the K-12 system. To evaluate Illinois s progress towards guaranteeing basic academic preparation for all children, Raising Quality, Promoting Equity determines the proportion of students that can access a K-12 public school with high levels of reading and math performance in each of 234 geographies across the state. It then identifies the areas with the widest gaps between enrolled students and seats in highperforming schools. The analysis also examines the relationship between poverty and academic performance. The supply-and-demand focus of the needs assessment shifts emphasis from the performance of individual students and schools to the quality and geographic distribution of the services that the K-12 public school system provides statewide. In this way, the methodology gauges whether the system is meeting students needs and delivering a quality service to taxpayers. Funding and ROI: Two Sides of the Same Coin. After analyzing patterns in school performance and identifying 1
the areas in which there is the most need for highperforming schools, Raising Quality, Promoting Equity examines district funding and return on investment (ROI). Fiscal decisions at federal, state, and local levels fundamentally shape educational opportunities. For this reason, an assessment of the K-12 landscape in Illinois is incomplete without insight into the effectiveness of resource allocation across and within districts. Analyses of resource allocation in this report stem from two principles about revenues and expenditures in public schools. At the most basic level, state and local leaders should guarantee that schools and districts have enough resources to meet their students academic needs. In turn, school districts should use public funds wisely to maximize the quality of the services that they provide. In evaluating the school funding system in the state, the study uses the benchmarks of adequacy and equity: do districts have enough funding to meet students needs, and does the system guarantee that enough resources flow into low-income communities to compensate for inequalities in local resources? The study then turns to ROI, which gauges the impact of districts day-to-day spending on outcomes in critical academic subjects. Together, the analysis of district funding and ROI helps stakeholders understand at state, regional, and district-by-district levels whether educators have enough resources to guarantee high levels of academic achievement and whether local decisionmakers are utilizing those resources in impactful ways. A Tool for Action. Ultimately, Raising Quality, Promoting Equity and the accompanying online tool are designed to support the work of stakeholders in K-12 education in Illinois. Beginning from a shared vision of a public education system in which high-quality schools are abundant and evenly distributed across the Prairie State, the study presents data and analysis that can help decisionmakers develop differentiated strategies to raise quality and promote equity in schools across our state. KEY FINDINGS The K-12 public education system in Illinois does not provide a substantial majority of families the option to send their children to high-performing schools. Twelve percent of students in the state have access to a public school that has achieved the goal of preparing all or nearly all of its students to read, write, and do math at grade level. The lack of performing options in Illinois is a statewide issue that cuts across geographies upstate and downstate, in cities, suburbs, towns, and rural areas. Only a small handful of affluent suburban municipalities has enough seats in high-performing public schools for every child from kindergarten through high school. Public education in Illinois is inequitable. The public school system does not equalize opportunity for Illinois residents; it reinforces inequalities among them. Because the state relied heavily on property taxes to fund public education, school districts serving low-income communities were far more likely to be underfunded than those in more affluent parts of the state. Municipalities with lower property wealth were therefore forced to tax at high rates to maintain public schools. Yet even despite this heavy financial burden on residents, Illinois s poorest students had almost no access to high-performing schools. Across the state, standardized test scores gauged family wealth about as well as they assess math and reading ability. Fairer school funding, however, seems likely to help close the achievement gap. Nearly three out of five students in the state were enrolled in districts with precarious funding levels in the absence of funding reform. The state s funding system thereby compromised most children s access to performing 2
schools. Funding inadequacy is a statewide issue, but lowincome and downstate communities were more likely to face underfunding than wealthier and upstate peers. Many underperforming and underfunded school districts are making good use of the financial resources at their disposal. From the standpoint of contributing to core academic achievement, many of the most impactful dollars in the state s public education system are being spent in districts that are approaching, but have not yet reached, high levels of reading and math performance. Moreover, return on investment (ROI) is twenty percent higher in underfunded school districts than in adequately funded school districts. For these reasons, some underfunded and underperforming school districts appear to be among the best candidates for future investment and even potential sources of best practices. RECOMMENDATIONS FRAMEWORK late of recommendations, see page #. Academic accountability, adequate and equitable resources, and financial stewardship should represent a unified statewide effort to improve K-12 public schools. Performance, funding, and return on investment must be addressed jointly and holistically to raise quality and promote equity in public education in Illinois. The broad scope and deep reach of this collaborative agenda means that community, school, district, municipal, regional, and state leaders have interdependent roles to play, in conjunction with support from the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. Raising Quality, Promoting Equity presents a framework through which all stakeholders can approach school improvement, allowing for differentiated responsibility without losing sight of common goals. STRATEGICALLY DETERMINE WHERE Calibrate efforts to supply AND demand... Use the geographical distribution of supply (seats in high-performing schools) and demand (children enrolled in K-12 public schools) across the state to identify areas in which to target school improvement efforts. Pay special attention to the high-need areas that this study identifies....using the service level... The service level is the proportion of students in a study area who have access to a highperforming school. Communities with the lowest levels of service, or with no service at all, have the highest levels of need per school-age resident....and the service gap. The service gap is the number of students in a study area who lack access to a high-performing school. Communities with the widest service gaps have the greatest numbers of students in need. The wider the service gap, the more students in need can be reached by successful school improvement efforts. For a full list of recommendations, go to page 53. 3
RAISING QUALITY, PROMOTING EQUITY A UNIFIED FRAMEWORK FOR SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT IN ILLINOIS HOLISTICALLY DETERMINE HOW ADEQUATE AND EQUITABLE RESOURCES Invest in underfunded schools and districts. Guarantee adequate and equitable funding for every school in Illinois: ensure that all schools are equipped to meet students needs and that the state funding system compensates for disparities in local wealth. FINANCIAL STEWARDSHIP Empower local and regional stakeholders to identify best practices for resource allocation and to align their spending to maximize impact on school performance. Structure investments in districts and schools based on need and the impact of current spending on performance outcomes. ACADEMIC ACCOUNTABILITY Set high standards for academic performance, and hold schools to them through a clear accountability system. Implement rigorous summative ratings that meaningfully capture progress towards promoting all or nearly all students to grade level, and tailor supports to each school s rating. 4
DATA AND METHODS DATA Data Year. The findings contained in Raising Quality, Promoting Equity are based on data from academic year 2013-14. For elementary and middle schools, the standardized examination in Illinois in 2013-14 was the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT); for high schools, it was the Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE). Beginning in 2014-15, the state transitioned to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) examinations. There were two main reasons for the decision to use data from 2013-14 in this study despite the state s transition to a new testing regime. First, the federal K-12 district finance data on which the latter portions of the study are based were only available through 2013-14. It was necessary to use directory, enrollment, and performance data from the same year in order to make meaningful comparisons among performance, funding, and return on investment. Second, the state restricted the use of scores from the 2014-15 administration of PARCC in accountability systems. Although the performance metric in this study is not constitutive of an accountability system, IFF aligned with state policy to avoid confusion and did not utilize 2014-15 PARCC scores in generating performance ratings for schools and districts. And because the data for the study were processed before 2015-16 PARCC scores were made public, the 2013-14 administration of standardized tests was the best available option for analysis. Also due to the transition in standardized tests, rolling averages or other multi-year data, which would have required the use of outcomes from prior to 2013-14, were not used in generating performance ratings or other measures. While multi-year or rolling data have advantages, they were outweighed by the concern that the findings would have been insufficiently current if scores from academic years prior to 2013-14 were incorporated. Data Sources. Bush School of Government & Public, Texas A&M University Comparable Wage Index Updates Chicago Public Schools Attendance Boundaries ISAT Performance Levels PSAE Performance Levels Twentieth Day Membership Reports City of Chicago Community Area Boundaries Esri Single-Year Age Data Illinois Network of Charter Schools Charter School Directory and Enrollment Illinois State Board of Education Directory of Educational Entities Fall Enrollment Counts Illinois Report Card Original EAV and Tax Rates Reports School District Financial Profiles National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data Local Education Agency Finance Survey Public School Directory Public School Membership US Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2014 School District Boundaries 5
Table 1: IFF Performance Rating for Illinois Public Schools, 2013-14 Base Grouping (Reading & Math Composite Score) 90% proficient or above A 80-89.9% proficient B 70-79.9% proficient C 60-69.9% proficient D 50-59.9% proficient F Extra Credit Elementary & Middle Schools High Schools Exceptional levels of student growth Exceptional rates of graduation and college enrollment Penalty High rates of non-participation in assessments METHODOLOGY Needs Assessment. The core of Raising Quality, Promoting Equity is a supply-and-demand needs assessment. It answers a basic question: where in Illinois do the most children lack access to a public school in which all or nearly all students succeed in core subjects? To answer this question, the analysis divides the state of Illinois into 234 study areas, which are the base geographical unit of the needs assessments. Ninety study areas correspond to counties. In the higher-density metropolitan areas of Chicago, Rockford, Peoria, and East St. Louis, counties are subdivided into clusters of zip codes. Within each study area, supply is the number of seats available in high-performing K-12 public (district and charter) schools. Demand is the number of children enrolled in all K-12 public schools. The difference between supply (performing seats) and demand (students) is the service gap, the number of additional seats in highperforming schools that need to be made available in a study area in order to reach all students in the system. The service level is the quotient of supply over demand, the proportion of students who currently have access to a high-performing public school within a study area. The service level and service gap are calculated within each study area for three grade divisions (grades K-5, 6-8, and 9-12). The service gaps within the three divisions are summed to arrive at K-12 totals. Each study area is then ranked by its service gap within the grade divisions. Finally, with adjustments for population density, a composite K-12 ranking is created from the study area s rankings within each grade group. The highest-ranked fifth of the study areas are designated as high-need areas. Unlike many states, Illinois did not publicize a summative evaluation of school performance in 2013-14. 1 With input from the advisory committee for Raising Quality, Promoting Equity, IFF consulted best practices from other Midwestern states to create an accessible and actionoriented categorization of schools. In determining which schools contributed to supply within a study area, Raising Quality, Promoting Equity places schools and districts into one of five groups on an A F scale. A school or district was considered performing if it had a rating of A or B. Schools and districts first entered a base grouping determined by their composite proficiency rate in reading and math. 1 The state will likely begin assigning schools to one of four performance tiers beginning in 2019-20. The proposed system, however, was not yet public at the time that this study began. 6
Elementary and middle school scores advanced one group (e.g., from a C to a B) if the school or district was exceeding standards for student growth in math and reading (i.e., if the average of a school s reading and math growth levels on the Value Table Growth Model was at least 115). High school scores advanced one group if the school s or district s graduation rates across all students and among low-income students and sixteen-month postsecondary enrollment rates were both in the top quartile statewide. All scores receded one group (e.g., from a B to a C) if less than ninety-five percent of students or of lowincome students were tested in reading and math. These performance ratings do not and are not designed to capture all of the meaningful aspects of quality public education. Their advantage is that they contribute to the key research question elaborated above by assessing the proportion of students that is prepared to achieve in core academic subjects reading and math. District Funding. Illinois is an economically and demographically diverse state. The costs associated with running a school district vary widely across its urban, suburban, town, and rural regions. Moreover, the state s children enter the public school system with a wide array of academic needs. The prices of providing services that can meet these needs vary with the composition of the student body and the size of the school district. This diversity has consequences for a central goal of Raising Quality, Promoting Equity: analyzing equity and adequacy in Illinois s school funding system. Drawing from best practices in school finance research, most financial figures in Raising Quality, Promoting Equity are weighted to standardize expenditures and revenues across geographically and demographically dissimilar districts. The study adjusts revenue and expenditure figures in two basic ways. It first applies a cost of living adjustment using the Comparable Wage Index, a widely used set of multipliers for individual school districts based on the cost pressures of the labor market in which they are located. The index adjusts figures upward in school districts in which the cost of living is below the national norm and downward in school districts in which the cost of living is above the national norm. Then, a set of weights 2 is applied based on the district s size and its populations of three student groups that need additional educational resources in order to thrive: low-income students, English language learners, and children with disabilities. The function of these weights is to normalize the reach of revenues and expenditures as if all enrolled children were general education students with no need for specialized or intensive supports. The number of students within each of the three subgroups is multiplied by the corresponding weight to arrive at an adjusted enrollment total that measures the number of general education students that the district would be able to accommodate with a given revenue or expenditure. To arrive at weighted per-pupil figures, disctrict-wide totals are divided by the adjusted enrollment. The cost adjustments utilized in this analysis allow districts to be compared as if they were educating the same students in the same place. The principle behind the weights is 2 After a review of the literature on school district finance, IFF chose to adopt weights that Augenblick, Palaich and Associates (APA) developed for an analysis of district funding in Montana. APA are national leaders in school finance research and in the past have been commissioned by the State of Illinois to 7 analyze the state s K-12 funding formula. A principal advantage of these weights is that they differentiate costs based on district size. Recognizing the relative differences in cost burden based on size is helpful in the context of Illinois, where some districts enroll only a few dozen students and others enroll tens of thousands.
A step-by-step demonstration of the process of cost weighting can be found on pages 31-34. simple: each dollar spent in public schools goes further to meet student need in places where the cost of living is lower and children need fewer intensive or specialized educational services. The weighted figures can therefore be considered measures of how much need a school district is positioned to meet with a given amount of revenue or expenditure. A school district with higher weighted revenue can access more goods and services and therefore is able to meet more need from a financial perspective. Finally, based on weighted per-pupil revenue, Raising Quality, Promoting Equity makes a determination about the adequacy of funding levels in all school districts in Illinois for which full financial data were available. This determination is based on the Foundation Level (FL) that the Illinois Education Funding Advisory Board (EFAB) released every other year, with adjustments for inflation. The FL was a statewide standard for the amount of combined local and state funding necessary to educate a general education student in Illinois; in 2013-14, it was $8,672 per pupil. The study compares a district s weighted revenue to the FL to gauge funding adequacy. Each district s level of revenue is assigned a category: and math achievement per dollar spent on a district s K-12 operations, after the weights described above have been applied. It is derived by dividing a district s composite proficiency rate in reading and math by its weighted operational expenditure per pupil. Operational expenditures comprise instruction, staff and pupil support, food, transportation, and overhead. Included in overhead spending are administration, central office and business services, and maintenance. Debt service, long-term capital expenditures, and other costs that can reasonably vary from year to year are not included in operational expenditures. A detailed breakdown of the school district expenditure categorization scheme utilized in this report can be found in Appendix B. For the purposes of this study, return does not connote overall district quality. Rather, ROI is strategically based more narrowly on the academic foundation that drives Raising Quality, Promoting Equity: proficiency in reading and math. For each school district, ROI answers a basic question: given the amount of need that a district s funding allows it to meet, how well are students performing in core academic subjects? Districts ROI are assigned to one of three groups: Funding Adequacy Adequate Borderline Underfunded Revenue vs. Foundation Level (FL) 3.5% or more above FL Within 3.5% of FL 3.5% or more below FL Return on Investment High ROI Medium ROI Low ROI Rank Highest third of ROI Middle third of ROI Bottom third of ROI Return on Investment. In Raising Quality, Promoting Equity, return on investment (ROI) measures reading 8
REFERENCE MAPS AND FIGURES Table 2: Statewide Enrollment Breakdown, 2013-14 Number Enrollment Percent of Schools Grades K-5 Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Total of Total DISTRICT SCHOOLS DISTRICT 4,234 878,916 446,984 590,627 1,987,748 87% TRADITIONAL TRADITIONAL DISTRICT 3,677 844,194 428,504 538,082 1,860,171 82% General Education 3,677 844,194 428,504 538,082 1,860,171 82% MAGNET/SELECTIVE 147 31,877 16,027 40,106 90,163 4% General Education 147 31,877 16,027 40,106 90,163 4% SPECIAL SPECIAL PROGRAM PROGRAM 410 2,845 2,453 12,439 37,414 2% Special Education 151 2,265 1,671 4,824 10,530 0% Alternative/ Vocational 163 307 727 6,974 8,549 0% Early Childhood 88 273 1 17,806 1% Correctional Institution 8 55 640 529 0% CHARTER SCHOOLS CHARTER 148 23,112 11,878 26,523 63,462 3% DISTRICT-AUTHORIZED 144 22,257 11,625 26,054 61,874 3% General Education 120 22,257 11,625 21,409 57,225 3% Alternative/Vocational 24 4,645 4,649 0% STATE-AUTHORIZED 4 855 253 469 1,588 0% General Education 4 855 253 469 1,588 0% PRIVATE SCHOOLS PRIVATE 1,541 88,373 39,674 47,624 229,966 10% General Education 1,154 84,092 38,744 45,133 208,051 9% Special Education 112 714 791 1,818 4,702 0% Alternative/Vocational 32 493 139 673 1,622 0% Early Childhood 243 3,074 15,591 1% Total 5,923 990,401 498,536 664,774 2,281,176 100% ENROLLMENT BREAKDOWN In 2013-14, approximately 2.28 million students in Illinois enrolled in over 4,200 district schools, 148 charter schools, and more than 1,500 private schools. For every ten students, nine attended a public school and one attended a private school. 3 Ninety-seven percent of public school students attended district schools, and three percent attended charter schools. IFF included in the supply-and-demand analysis all public (district and charter) schools that offered general education programming and administered the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) and/or Prairie State Achievement Examination (PSAE) in academic year 2013-14. Types of schools that the analysis does not include are written in light gray in the table above. 3 Enrollment data for many private schools in academic year 2013-14 was incomplete or missing. It is likely that private school enrollment was slightly higher than indicated in the table above. The quality of available data makes a fully accurate count impossible. 9
DEMOGRAPHIC REFERENCE MAPS Raising Quality, Promoting Equity contains several sets of maps that explore the distribution of performance, funding, and return on investment across the state. It can be useful to compare these outcomes to the population of school-age children and the proportion of children from low-income households in individual places. IFF invites readers to reference the maps in this section when analyzing the others that are distributed throughout the report. In this way, stakeholders can visualize the relationships among population, poverty, and the outcomes that this study presents in the places that are of interest to them. Demographic shifts in Illinois over time should be taken into account, especially with regard to the population of low-income students in the state. The public school student body has grown substantially poorer over the last decade. Between 2005 and 2015, the proportion of school districts in which over half of students lived in low-income households more than tripled from thirteen to forty-three percent. 4 In urban centers and outside of the major metropolitan areas in the state, low-income student populations have increasingly become the norm in K-12 public schools. Higher-income school districts, on the other hand, are concentrated in and around the state s major metropolitan areas. SECTION CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 4 Advance Illinois, Every Student Counts: The State We re in 2016-2017: A Report on Public Education in Illinois, November 2016. 10
Map 1: Density of School-Aged Children 11
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Map 2: Children in Poverty 13
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PART I NEEDS ASSESSMENT: SCHOOL PERFORMANCE INTRODUCTION: KEEPING PROMISES Article X of the Constitution of the State of Illinois binds the state to guaranteeing the educational development of all persons to the limits of their capacities through a system of free high-quality public educational institutions and services. 5 Access to basic academic skills is fundamental to fulfilling this promise as is safeguarding access equitably to students of all socioeconomic backgrounds. Every public school must therefore be equipped to prepare all or nearly all pupils to achieve at grade level as the foundation, not to the exclusion, of the many other dimensions of a high-quality school. Failure to prevent a large number of students from falling behind grade level shortchanges taxpayers who contribute to the system with the expectation of a quality public good in exchange. It also compromises our state s long-term economic competitiveness. More fundamentally, however, an underperforming K-12 school system fails to meet the state s explicit constitutional responsibilities to children. The needs assessment at the core of this study finds that, in most public schools, a substantial share of the student body finishes the year behind grade level in core subjects. Statewide, twelve percent of K-12 public school students had access to an A- or B-rated school in 2013-14 based on the metrics developed for this study. And while the need for performing schools was spread across the state upstate and downstate, in cities, suburbs, towns, and rural areas low-income communities had disproportionate need for high-performing K-12 schools. In many places in which IFF has conducted K-12 education needs assessments, the need for performing public school seats has been concentrated more heavily in a handful of high-need areas. For this reason, IFF often recommended that stakeholders focus attention in the highest-need areas in order to have the greatest impact on the service gap. In Illinois, however, the K-12 landscape was practically the reverse of other states situations in 2013-14. Rather than identifying concentrated pockets of low performance, across Illinois IFF found only concentrated pockets of high performance. The need for performing schools is a system-wide challenge. It will require a comprehensive solution with collaboration among local, regional, and state stakeholders to increase the service level and close the service gap. The data presented in this chapter illuminate the level of need across the state and allow for local and regional comparisons within it. In this way, education stakeholders can better understand the landscape and collaborate across sectors and levels of government to keep Illinois s promises to the children of our state. SECTION CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 5 Constitution of the State of Illinois, art. X, 1. 16
A SYSTEM-LEVEL ASSESSMENT Fifty-eight percent of K-12 public school pupils in Illinois were proficient in reading and math in 2013-14. 6 Relative to other states, a 2014 comparative analysis of school performance called Illinois s academic outcomes middling. 7 These data reveal substantial room for improvement but do not suggest chronic underperformance. To be sure, student-level metrics such as the percentage of children on grade level communicate important information about school quality. This study, however, evaluates public education in Illinois at the system level. Rather than asking how many individual students are managing to succeed within the public school system, Raising Quality, Promoting Equity assesses the extent to which schools fulfill a basic promise of public education: to guarantee access to basic skill-building to all children and to create environments of rigor and high achievement. To understand academic outcomes at the system level, this study analyzes access to quality in the aggregate. The objective is less to rate individual schools than to understand the landscape of K-12 options in counties and neighborhoods. Viewed from this angle, the situation of public education in the Prairie State is more severe than the proportion of students on grade level suggests. STATEWIDE UNDERPERFORMANCE The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), in consultation with stakeholders throughout the state s education community, have established a goal for ninety percent of students to be proficient in reading and math by 2032. 8 When standards that align with this goal are applied across Illinois, severe underperformance comes into view. In 2013-14, the K-12 system in Illinois did not provide a substantial majority of families the option to send their children to schools in which all or nearly all students finished the year on grade level in core subjects. Statewide, twelve percent of students had access to a school in which all or nearly all students finished the academic year on grade level in reading and math. Based on the metrics developed for this study, schools with ratings of C, D, or F predominated K-12 education in Illinois. Over half of students attended F-rated schools. The state needed over 1.6 million additional seats in A- or B-rated schools for every child enrolled in the K-12 system to have access to a high-performing public school. Based on the metrics developed for this study, within and across grade levels, roughly eight out of nine students lacked access to an A- or B-rated public school in 2013-14. No particular grade division was in appreciably higher need than any other. Each grade division s level of need was in line with its share of the Illinois student body. Statewide, about a third of demand was in high schools, about a quarter in middle schools, and just under half in elementary schools; the service gap was distributed across the state with nearly identical proportions. 6 Data from academic years 2014-15 and 2015-16, when Illinois transitioned to the nationally normed Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) examinations, returned lower results. In both years, about a third of Illinois public school students were on grade level in math and reading. Relative to children in other states, then, an even greater proportion of K-12 public school students in Illinois were behind grade level in 2014-15 and 2015-16 than the 2013-14 data utilized in this study suggest. 7 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Leaders & Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on K-12 Educational Effectiveness, 2014. The comparison in this study is based on the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. 8 Illinois State Board of Education, State Template for the Consolidated State Plan Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, April 2017, pp. 22-30. 17
Grade Division Table 3: Supply and Demand by Grade Division, Statewide Performing Schools Demand Supply Level Percent of K-5 274 812,130 106,800 706,060 13% 43% 6-8 162 441,165 47,528 393,637 11% 24% 9-12 32 594,857 59,854 535,003 10% 33% K-12 355* 1,848,852 214,182 1,634,670 12% 100% *Because some schools overlap grade divisions, the number of performing schools may not sum. Chart 1: Enrolled Students by School Performance A B 3% 8% C 15% 55% F 19% D SERVICE LEVEL AND SERVICE GAP The service gap and the service level are complementary ways of assessing need for quality K-12 public school seats. These two components of the analysis can be utilized hand-in-hand for the purposes of prioritizing and tailoring components of a comprehensive school improvement agenda. For example, in both Massac and Ogle Counties, the K-12 service level is just under eight percent, meaning that about eight percent of students had access to an A- or B-rated public school. Massac County, however, needs to create about 2,300 seats to close the service gap, while Ogle County needs to create about 7,500. Ogle County has a wider service gap and is ranked number thirty-five out of the 234 study areas, making it a high-need area at the K-12 level. Massac County s service gap, on the other hand, is ranked 139. Reforms designed to reach the greatest number of students might focus on Ogle County, whereas interventions designed to increase quality in places with low access to performing schools could reasonably focus on either. 18
Chart 2: Level in Study Areas 78% 0-10% served 76-100% served 51-75% served 11% 6% 11-25% served 26-50% served As the final section of this chapter demonstrates, insufficient access to high-performing K-12 public schools in Illinois was more pervasive in low-income communities than in wealthier parts of the state in 2013-14. Without diminishing the depth of need for better access to A- and B-rated schools in economically marginalized neighborhoods, however, it is crucial to underscore that the lack of performing options in Illinois was a statewide issue that cut across geographies and socioeconomic groups. Based on the performance metrics applied in this study, an A- or B-rated public school was the exception in almost every part of the Prairie State in 2013-14. In ninety-five percent of the 234 study areas into which Raising Quality, Promoting Equity divides Illinois in cities, suburbs, towns, and rural areas alike, across demographic and socioeconomic spectra most students did not have access to an A- or B-rated public school in 2013-14: In seventy-eight percent of the study areas, less than one in ten K-12 students had access to an A- or B-rated K-12 public school. More than half of K-12 students had access to an A- or B-rated K-12 public school in only twelve of the 234 study areas. In almost half of the study areas, there was effectively no access at all to A- or B-rated K-12 public schools. 19
Moreover, even the few study areas in which access to A- and B-rated schools was more than marginal were clustered in a small handful of areas of the state: All of the study areas in which more than ten percent of K-12 students had access to a high-performing school were in the Chicago, Peoria, and Bloomington- Normal metropolitan areas. Only two study areas covering the affluent North Shore Chicago suburbs of Glencoe, Winnetka, and Wilmette had enough performing seats for every child enrolled in the system in grades K-12. SECTION CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 20
Map 3: Level ONLINE TOOL: www.iff.org/ilschoolstudy Evaluate outcomes in places of interest to you using the online tool. See the results of the needs assessment across the state, along with key performance indicators for every public school. 21
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Grade Division Table 4: Supply and Demand by Grade Division, High-Need Areas Performing Schools Demand Supply Level Percent of K-5 41 304,694 17,510 287,184 6% 18% 6-8 27 160,187 5,704 154,483 4% 9% 9-12 3 207,389 5,579 201,810 3% 12% K-12 48* 672,270 28,794 643,477 4% 39% *Because some schools overlap grade divisions, the number of performing schools may not sum. HIGH-NEED AREAS In 2013-14, just under two fifths of the need for seats in high-performing K-12 public schools in Illinois was located in the forty-seven high-need areas that this study identifies. With adjustments for population density, these geographies are the fifth of the study areas in which the largest numbers of children did not have access to a school with a rating of A or B based on the metrics that IFF applied in this study to gauge progress towards the statewide goal of achieving ninety percent proficiency in reading and math. Across the high-need areas, only one out of twenty-five children enrolled in the K-12 public school system in 2013-14 had access to a school that provided grade-level reading and math preparation to all or nearly all of its students. This service level is lower than in Illinois as a whole, in which approximately one out of eight children had access to a school that had reached or approached statewide goals for reading and math proficiency. The ranking of study areas by need for performing seats can facilitate stakeholders efforts to strategically target local and regional interventions: Local officials may want to understand how the need for higher-performing public schools in their communities compares to that of peers in order to advocate for greater resources. Nonprofit, philanthropic, and private sector entities who want to maximize the impact of their investments could choose to focus on the high-need areas, where the largest number of seats needs to be created and economies of scale are more advantageous. The high-need areas can also guide regional and state-level stakeholders who want to compare outcomes across the state. Bearing in mind the statewide context that eight out of nine students lacked access to an A- or B-rated school across Illinois in 2013-14 the high-need areas are an actionable guide to prioritizing areas in which to improve school quality. 23
Table 5: Supply and Demand by Study Area, Ranked, High-Need Areas Rank Study Area Demand Supply Level 1 Sangamon County 28,767 731 28,036 3% 2 Chicago: Chicago Lawn, West Lawn 23,313 897 22,416 4% 3 Chicago: Archer Heights, Brighton Park 21,527 776 20,752 4% 4 Champaign County 21,425 116 21,309 1% 5 Elgin 19,898 899 19,000 5% 6 Chicago: Lawndale 19,629 738 18,891 4% 7 McLean County 22,403 3,974 18,429 18% 8 Burlington, Pingree Grove, Carpentersville 17,958 729 17,228 4% 9 Rock Island County 17,787 0 17,787 0% 10 Cicero 17,126 4 17,121 0% 11 Rockford, Cherry Valley 17,076 665 16,411 4% 12 Kankakee County 16,652 9 16,644 0% 13 Chicago: Belmont Cragin, Hermosa 16,575 738 15,837 4% 14 LaSalle County 16,238 85 16,154 1% 15 South Elgin, Bartlett, Streamwood 16,544 767 15,777 5% 16 Round Lake Beach, Volo 16,007 257 15,750 2% 17 Macon County 14,686 0 14,686 0% 18 Crystal Lawns 16,147 931 15,216 6% 19 Richton Park, University Park, Crete, Willowbrook 13,903 520 13,383 4% 20 DeKalb County 14,206 1 14,205 0% 21 Chicago: New City, Fuller Park 13,865 570 13,295 4% 22 Vermilion County 12,238 2 12,236 0% 23 Chicago: Lower West Side 13,514 641 12,872 5% 24 Peoria 13,667 923 12,743 7% 25 Boone County 9,870 5 9,864 0% 26 Cahokia, Millstadt, East Carondelet 12,736 0 12,736 0% 27 Chicago: South Chicago, Calumet Heights, East Side 13,258 590 12,669 4% 28 Williamson County 9,602 0 9,602 0% 29 Rockdale, Elwood, Ingalls Park 12,572 158 12,414 1% 30 Adams County 8,429 0 8,429 0% 31 Lakemoor, Johnsburg, Holiday Hills 12,501 254 12,247 2% 32 Oswego, Boulder Hill 15,157 2,989 12,168 20% 33 Grundy County 8,207 176 8,032 2% 34 Chicago: Lincoln Park, Lakeview 15,042 3,070 11,972 20% 35 Ogle County 8,176 633 7,543 8% 36 Woodridge, Lisle, Downers Grove 14,430 2,550 11,880 18% 37 Lake Villa, Fox Lake Hills, Channel Lake 11,805 10 11,795 0% 38 Knox County 7,231 0 7,231 0% 39 Aurora (Central) 12,140 376 11,764 3% 40 Waukegan 11,811 132 11,680 1% 41 Henry County 7,333 428 6,904 6% 42 North Aurora 11,521 6 11,515 0% 43 Whiteside County 6,566 32 6,534 0% 44 Granite City, Hartford, Wood River 11,467 0 11,467 0% 45 Chicago: Logan Square 11,916 473 11,443 4% 46 Stephenson County 6,250 0 6,250 0% 47 Chicago: Avondale, North Center, Irving Park 13,097 1,938 11,159 15% 24
Map 4: ONLINE TOOL: www.iff.org/ilschoolstudy Evaluate outcomes in places of interest to you using the online tool. See the results of the needs assessment across the state, along with key performance indicators for each public (district and charter) school. 25
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Chart 3: Poverty and Proficiency in Illinois Public School Districts 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Students Eligible for Free or Reduced-Price Meals POVERTY AND PERFORMANCE The persistence of achievement gaps in Illinois is wellknown. Past research has identified the disparities in academic opportunity between students from the richest and poorest parts of the Prairie State as among the widest in the country. 9 Of course, underperforming schools are not exclusive to poor communities. At the system level, however, children from lower-income households are in greater need of A- and B-rated public schools than their higher-income peers. The inequalities between the services provided to rich and poor Illinoisans are stark. In the highest-income school districts in the state, a school that fails to reach roughly forty percent or more of its students is a rare exception; in the most economically disadvantaged communities in Illinois, it is the norm. Even in the context of a state with deep and diffuse need for higher K-12 educational quality, the public education system has most dramatically failed to guarantee educational opportunity to children from households on the economic margins. Rather than serving as an instrument of equalization, public education in Illinois reproduces socioeconomic inequalities among residents. Across Illinois, household income and school performance were tightly linked in 2013-14. Standardized test scores in public schools gauged family wealth almost as well as they assessed math and reading ability. Indeed, one of the strongest correlations in the data that IFF analyzed for Raising Quality, Promoting Equity was the inverse relationship between student achievement and household income. As the proportion of a school district s population that was below the poverty line increased, proficiency in math and reading decreased. 10 The poorer a neighborhood, 9 Advance Illinois, Every Student Counts: The State We re in 2016-2017: A Report on Public Education in Illinois, November 2016. 10 r(846) = -.819, p <.001 27
1,500 Chart 4: School Performance by Income Level A B 1,000 C D 500 F Low Low-Mid Mid-High District Income Level High the higher the proportion of students that the public education system in Illinois did not reach with grade-level preparation in reading and math. Moreover, based on the performance metrics that IFF applied in this study, even Illinois s short supply of A- and B-rated public schools was concentrated in the highest-income communities in the state: Three out of four high-performing schools in the state were located in the highest-income school districts. Only the most economically prosperous communities had access to a significant number of schools that had achieved the goal of promoting all or nearly all students to grade level in math and reading. Six percent of schools in high-income districts had a rating of F, while over thirty percent nearly three hundred schools were rated A or B. On the other hand, in all other districts combined, seventy-one percent of schools had a rating of F, and less than three percent only eighty-one in all were rated A or B. In low-income school districts, eighty-three percent of schools were F-rated over fourteen times the proportion in high-income communities. In Illinois, there are major barriers to high-performing schools across the state, in almost every city and town. The impact of these barriers on low-income communities, however, is disparate. Stakeholders cannot raise quality in Illinois public schools without first promoting equity. 28
PART II: DISTRICT FUNDING INTRODUCTION Analyzing school performance in isolation from factors that are crucial to shaping it yields an incomplete picture of public education in the state. Funding patterns in particular illuminate reasons that some districts fall short of the levels of reading and math preparation that public education should guarantee to every child. Schools cannot meet rigorous academic standards in the absence of adequate funding, including additional resources for student groups that need specialized educational services in order to thrive. For these reasons, education leaders and policymakers across the United States have long grappled with the role of local resources in funding public education. Many states have reformed systems that rely heavily on property taxes and other municipal funding sources on the grounds that they disadvantage lower-wealth communities. 11 Yet despite consensus on the need to correct Illinois s locallydriven school funding model as one journalist put it, Everyone agrees the state s funding formula needs to be updated and nearly everyone agrees [it] penalizes students in poorer districts 12 the state s regressive formula remained stable for decades. In recent years, initiatives to make school funding fairer in states throughout the country have often been grounded by an adequacy target designed to ensure that all children have access to public schools that can perform at a certain baseline. 13 The bipartisan Illinois School Funding Reform Commission recommended such an approach for the Prairie State in early 2017. 14 As of the publication of this report, such reforms had not been passed into law. And although the state budget for fiscal year 2018 increased Illinois s contribution to its public schools by over three hundred million dollars, 15 the new appropriation fell short of the three to six billion dollars that the Funding Reform Commission estimated would be necessary to stabilize revenues for public education moving forward. 16 At the state level, K-12 public schools in Illinois spent approximately the national average per pupil in 2013-14. 17 That Illinois kept pace with national norms overall, however, does not answer two crucial questions about school funding within the state. These two questions have to do with adequacy and equity. The question of resource adequacy is straightforward: do districts have enough money to provide the services that their student bodies need? Adequacy, then, is inextricably linked to equity. The Center for Public Education usefully frames the question of funding equity as, Do funds flow to schools according to need? 18 In the absence of additional revenue streams from state and federal sources, lower-wealth school districts are unlikely to keep pace with the amount of funds that wealthier districts can raise from property taxes and other local reservoirs. If the state funding formula does not compensate for inequalities in municipal property wealth, resource disparities surface between poorer and more affluent communities. All else held equal, these disparities give an edge to wealthier school districts, which have more dollars to support the education of each child. 11 See John Youngman, School Finance and Property Taxes, Land Lines, Winter 2016, pp. 16-28; Matthew M. Chingos and Kristin Blagg, Do Poor Kids Get Their Fair Share of School Funding?, The Urban Institute, May 2017. 12 Ashley Lisenby, School funding overhaul again faces long odds in Springfield, Chicago Sun-Times, February 8, 2016. 13 See John Youngman, School Finance and Property Taxes, Land Lines, Winter 2016, pp. 16-28. 14 See Illinois School Funding Reform Commission, Report to the General Assembly and Governor, February 2017. 15 See Illinois State Budget, Fiscal Year 2018, pp. 474-80. 16 Illinois School Funding Reform Commission, Report to the General Assembly and Governor, February 2017, p. 4. 17 National Education Association, Rankings & Estimates: Rankings of the States 2015 and Estimates of School Statistics 2016, May 2016. 18 Center for Public Education, Educational Equity: What Does It Mean? How Do We Know When We Reach It?, January 2016. 30
An equitable public school funding system appropriates additional revenue to communities with limited financial resources so that they can offer the same level of highquality educational services as wealthier peers. And, crucially, the condition of equity cannot be achieved through disproportionate tax burdens on lower-income communities. A state-commissioned analysis suggested that, as of 2012, the Illinois school finance system was failing to meet these fundamental conditions of equity in K-12 funding. 19 Raising Quality, Promoting Equity builds on these findings using data from academic year 2013-14. IN DEPTH: COST WEIGHTING Illinois is an economically and demographically diverse state. The costs associated with running a school district vary widely across its urban, suburban, town, and rural regions. Moreover, the state s children enter the public school system with a wide array of academic needs. The price of providing services that can meet these needs varies with the composition of the student body and the size of the school district. This diversity has consequences for a central goal of Raising Quality, Promoting Equity: analyzing the equitability and adequacy of school funding in Illinois. In this study, district funding analysis is comparative. Evaluations of equity compare resource levels across socioeconomic groups, while evaluations of adequacy compare school district revenues to the stateestablished minimum for per-pupil funding. Yet in terms of the amount of need it can meet, a dollar in one district is not necessarily equivalent to a dollar in another. Without adjustments based on factors that add costs for school districts, meaningful comparisons in the area of district finance are difficult to make. Drawing from best practices in school finance research, most financial figures in Raising Quality, Promoting Equity are weighted to standardize expenditures and revenues across geographically and demographically dissimilar districts. The principle behind the weights is simple: each dollar spent in public schools goes further to meet student need in places where the cost of living is lower and children need fewer intensive or 19 Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, Overview of the Structure of the Illinois School Finance System, September 2013. 31
Chart 5: Supplemental Funds Needed Per Dollar $1.48 $1.33 $1.22 $0.76 $0.39 $0.37 $0.50 $0.60 $0.50 Small District Medium District Low-Income Students Large District Small District Medium District Large District English Language Learners Small District Medium District Large District Children with Disabilities specialized educational services. The cost weights utilized in this analysis allow districts to be compared as if they were educating the same students in the same place. The weighted figures can therefore be considered measures of how much need a school district is positioned to meet. A school district with higher weighted revenue can access more goods and services and therefore can meet more need from a financial perspective. Raising Quality, Promoting Equity uses two kinds of cost weights. The study first applies a cost of living adjustment using the Comparable Wage Index (CWI), a widely used set of multipliers for individual school districts based on the cost pressures of the labor market in which they are located. Then, a set of weights 20 is applied based on the district s population of low-income students, English language learners, and children with disabilities. These weights deflate revenue and expenditure totals to normalize how much need each district s resources could meet per pupil if every student required the same types of educational services (i.e., if they were enrolled in general education programming), based on the levels of additional funding needed per pupil outlined in Chart 5. Consider the following example of the combined effects of the cost of living adjustment and the need-based weights. In 2013-14, Joppa-Maple Grove UD 38 a small school district near the Illinois-Kentucky border with 280 enrolled students spent $11,504 per pupil on K-12 operations. Wauconda CUSD 118, a larger district in Lake County that educated over four thousand students in the same year, had operational expenditures of $11,510 per pupil. At first glance, it might appear that funding levels were essentially equal between the two districts. 20 After a review of the literature on school district finance, IFF chose to adopt weights that Augenblick, Palaich and Associates (APA) developed for an analysis of district funding in Montana. APA are national leaders in school finance research and in the past have been contracted by the State of Illinois to analyze the state s K-12 funding formula. A principal advantage of the weights that APA developed for its study in Montana is that it differentiates costs based on district size. Recognizing the relative differences in cost burden based on size is helpful in the context of Illinois, where some districts enroll only a few dozen students and others enroll tens or hundreds of thousands. 32
Due to differences in educator salaries and other regional cost factors, however, a dollar goes substantially further to fund schools in Joppa-Maple Grove that it does in Wauconda. Joppa-Maple Grove is situated in one of the least expensive labor markets in the state, while Wauconda is in one of the costliest. Based on the Comparable Wage Index (CWI), each dollar can pay for roughly one quarter more educational goods and services in Joppa- Maple Grove than it can in Wauconda. Applying that index to account for cost of living, Joppa-Maple Grove s CWI-adjusted per-pupil funding is $14,183, while that of Wauconda is $10,760. After standardizing spending levels based on differences in the labor market, then, a twentyseven percent gulf in funding levels emerges that was not discernible from raw per-pupil spending. Yet in order to make accurate comparisons amongst diverse districts, it is important to ask not only how much a district s budget allows it to purchase but for whom it needs to make those purchases. This question has to do with the educational needs of the district s student body. Relative to a general education student, districts need supplementary funds to provide a quality education to vulnerable or marginalized student groups. Adding the need-based cost weights to the CWI-adjusted spending figures adjusts both districts spending totals by approximately the same proportion but for distinct reasons. Just under two thirds of the student body in Joppa-Maple Grove lived in low-income households in 2013-14, compared to only about a quarter of students in Wauconda. In Joppa-Maple Grove, there were no English language learners, and ten percent of students had a disability; in Wauconda, one in ten students was learning English, and fourteen percent had a disability. After applying the weights above in combination with the CWI-adjusted figures, Joppa-Maple Grove s spending is weighted downward by thirty-eight percent to $10,307, and that of Wauconda is weighted downward by thirty-five percent to $7,968. These weights are roughly equivalent. In Joppa-Maple Grove, however, it is the population of lowincome students that drives the adjustment, whereas in Wauconda more of the change is due to the proportions of English language learners and students with disabilities. Although the raw per-pupil spending figures suggest that the two school districts were spending about the same amount on K-12 operations, adjustments for cost of living and student need reveal that, in financial terms, Joppa- Maple Grove UD 38 was able to meet twenty-six percent more academic need than Wauconda CUSD 118 in 2013-14. Without making adjustments to revenue and expenditure figures based on geography and demographics, these disparities would be hidden in the data. Raising Quality, Promoting Equity puts all districts on an even playing field by applying best practices in K-12 funding research to normalize funding and spending levels across Illinois s diverse educational landscape. 33
Chart 6: Cost Weighting Example $14,183 $11,504 $11,510 $10,760 $10,307 $7,968 Joppa-Maple Grove UD 38 Funding Per Pupil Wauconda CUSD 118 Joppa-Maple Grove UD 38 Wauconda CUSD 118 Funding Per Pupil, Adjusted for Cost of Living Joppa-Maple Grove UD 38 Wauconda CUSD 118 Funding Per Pupil, Adjusted for Cost of Living and Weighted for Student Needs To gauge funding adequacy, this report utilizes a state standard for the minimum amount of combined state and local funds necessary to run a high-performing school: the Foundation Level (FL) 21 published biennially by the Education Funding Advisory Board (EFAB). In 2013-14, the EFAB FL was $8,672 per pupil for a general education student. 22 Because the cost-weighting methodology employed in this study normalizes revenues to a general education population with a consistent statewide cost adjustment, weighted figures can be compared directly to the FL to evaluate funding adequacy. Based on each district s weighted funding level, this report designates Joppa-Maple Grove UD 38 as adequately funded and Wauconda CUSD 118 as underfunded. 21 The foundation level (FL) should be distinguished from the statutory level (SL), which was the amount of funding that the state legislature agrees to guarantee school districts in a given year. At $6,119 per pupil, the SL in 2013-14 was about seventy percent of the amount that EFAB determined each district needs. 22 Based on numerous additional cost pressures, including the services required to meet the needs of vulnerable or marginalized students, supplemental grants and revenue supports beyond the FL are recommended on a district-by-district basis. See Illinois Education Funding Advisory Board, Illinois Education Funding Recommendations: A Report Submitted to the Illinois General Assembly, January 2015; Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, Overview of the Structure of the Illinois School Finance System, September 2013. 34
FUNDING ADEQUACY Statewide Underfunding. Schools cannot create environments of rigor, support, and achievement if they do not have enough funds to meet their students academic needs. The Illinois Education Funding Advisory Board s (EFAB s) Foundation Level (FL), a statewide standard for the amount of money needed provide quality education to a general education student, was $8,672 per pupil in 2013-14. Comparing districts weighted state and local revenue in that year to the FL reveals how their funding levels stacked up to the amount of resources that districts needed to guarantee access to core academic training. Using the FL as a benchmark, fifty-seven percent of public school students in Illinois over 1.1 million children were enrolled in a school district that was underfunded or borderline underfunded in 2013-14. These gaps in funding forced districts to work with fewer dollars than the state s recommendation, creating obstacles to vital educational resources. By placing nearly three out of five public school students in fiscally precarious educational settings, the state s education funding formula compromised the majority of children s opportunity to access a performing school. Location, Poverty, and Funding Adequacy. Data surrounding poverty and location are vital to a comprehensive education improvement agenda in a demographically and geographically diverse state such as Illinois. The preceding chapter of Raising Quality, Promoting Equity highlighted ties between income and school performance. And while the need for higherperforming schools was relatively well-spread throughout the state, the communities in which a substantial number of students had access to an A- or B-rated school were Chart 7: Enrolled Students by Funding Level Adequately Funded 43% 13% Borderline 44% Underfunded concentrated in the state s higher-income suburbs. Particularly given the salience of income and geography for understanding school performance, the relationships among poverty, location, and district funding merit exploration. Mirroring patterns in school underperformance, statistically significant associations emerged between funding adequacy and income level in the Prairie State. 23 In 2013-14, underfunding disproportionately affected Illinois s lowest-income school districts. The poorest districts were approximately five times more likely than their high-income peers to have insufficient revenue based on state standards. Whereas an underfunded or borderline underfunded school district was an exception in higher-income areas of the state, it was the norm in Illinois s low-income communities. 23 χ 2 (6, N = 855) = 146.7, p <.001 35
Chart 8: Funding Adequacy by Income Level Chart 9: Weighted Revenue Per Pupil by District Income Level Revenue Source Federal State Low Income Low-Mid Income Mid-High Income High Income Local Underfunded Borderline Adequately Funded In weighted dollars, which equalize the amount of need that a school district is positioned to meet based on its financial resources, average revenue per pupil in highincome districts ($12,704) was one third higher than in low-income districts ($9,549) in 2013-14. Higher-income school districts had, on average, over three thousand additional dollars with which to educate each student when location and student need are taken into account. These patterns in school district funding translate into disparities in the quality of educational services that could be provided to students. Increased revenue opens up possibilities for districts to fund any number of educational programs that might boost student outcomes in math and reading and beyond: smaller class sizes, staffing improvements, specialized instruction, tutoring programs, better textbooks and equipment, facilities upgrades, etc. The funding system in Illinois public Low Income Low- Mid Income Mid- High Income High Income schools structurally guarantees that students whose guardians have higher incomes have access to more opportunities in the public education system than students from poorer households. Alongside income-based disparities, statistically significant associations emerged in the adequacy of funding available to school districts by geography in 2013-14. 24 A greater proportion of students in urban areas were enrolled in underfunded school districts than students who resided in rural, town, or suburban areas. 24 χ 2 (6, N = 855) = 40.6, p <.001 36
Districts located in towns on the fringes of metropolitan areas were underfunded at higher rates than districts in urban, suburban, or rural areas. The funding formula in Illinois was more likely to underfund a district in a town than a district in an urban center even though a lower proportion of students in towns attended underfunded districts than students in cities. Chart 10: Funding Adequacy by Geography Furthermore, when district funding levels were aggregated to the 234 study areas into which Raising Quality, Promoting Equity divides Illinois, regional gulfs in funding adequacy emerged. Underfunded school districts were dispersed throughout the state in 2013-14. Overall, however, educational resources tended to be less adequate downstate than upstate. In the northern half of Illinois, only a handful of locations Chicago, some of its suburbs, and Kankakee County were underfunded at the study area level. In southern Illinois, by contrast, most districts were underfunded or on the borderline. Rural Underfunded Town Borderline Suburban Urban Adequately Funded 37
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Map 5: Funding Adequacy ONLINE TOOL: www.iff.org/ilschoolstudy Evaluate and compare district funding outcomes using the online tool, which allows users to zoom in and see individual districts funding levels, along with a set of key financial and performance indicators. 39
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Chart 11: Revenue Sources for K-12 Public Education Federal 7% for a smaller percentage of overall revenue for public education. Based on estimates from the National Education Association, Illinois relied about sixty percent more on locally sourced revenue and fifty percent less on state-distributed revenue to fund public schools than the average state. 25 State 34% 59% Local For 2014, Illinois received a funding distribution rating of F from the Education Law Center, which evaluates funding relative to student poverty. 26 The Education Trust found Illinois s resource gap between high- and low-income school districts to be by far the largest in the United States. 27 FUNDING EQUITY Combined, the 855 school districts analyzed in this study received over thirty billion dollars in revenue in academic year 2013-14. Fifty-nine cents of each dollar came from local sources primarily from property taxes. The state of Illinois provided just over a third of education funding. This model of school funding made Illinois exceptional for the extent of its reliance on municipalities to fund K-12 education, for the slim portion of education funding that the state directed, for the failure of its funding formula to shore up resources in low-income districts, and for the lack of progress in making funding more equitable over time. Local resources accounted for a larger proportion of K-12 school funding in Illinois than in any state in the country, and nowhere did state funding account The Urban Institute found Illinois s state education spending to be the most regressive in the country in 2013-14. And whereas some states reduced or eliminated regressivity in their funding formulas over the past two decades, Illinois s school funding was slightly more regressive in 2014 than in 1995. 28 One clear way that residents of lower-income neighborhoods attempted to correct for this imbalance in funding levels is by paying more in school taxes. To compensate for the gap in funding that state resources did not fill, taxpayers in low-income school districts were taxed at twenty-five percent higher rates than taxpayers in high-income school districts in 2013-14. In this way, the state s reliance on local sources to fund schools placed a disproportionate financial burden on poor communities. The funding structure in Illinois effectively required residents with the least disposable income to contribute even more of it to schools and they still recouped less adequate resources in return. 25 National Education Association, Rankings & Estimates: Rankings of the States 2015 and Estimates of School Statistics 2016, May 2016. 26 Bruce Baker, Danielle Farrie, Monete Johnson, Theresa Luhm and David G. Sciarra, Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card, sixth edition, Education Law Center, January 2017. 41 27 Natasha Ushomirsky and Davis Williams, Funding s 2015: Too Many States Still Spend Less on Educating Students Who Need the Most, The Education Trust, March 2015. 28 Matthew M. Chingos and Kristin Blagg, Do Poor Kids Get Their Fair Share of School Funding?, The Urban Institute, May 2017.
Chart 12: Income, Wealth, and Revenue for K-12 Education Revenue Source Federal State Local Low Income Low- Mid Income Mid- High Income High Income Given this landscape, disparities in funding adequacy are unsurprising. The funding structure in the Prairie State, by channeling a relatively small proportion of education funding through state channels, compromised the state s leverage over school district funding. As a result, Illinois had less ability to compensate for inequalities arising from disparities in municipal property wealth than states that control a greater share of K-12 resources. These imbalances left low-income school districts, which are dependent on state aid to raise an adequate amount of funding for students, with little recourse. SECTION CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 42
Chart 13: Instructional Spending and Proficiency 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% $0 $5,000 $10,000 $15,000 $20,000 Instructional Expenditure Per Pupil (Weighted) SPENDING AND PERFORMANCE Does increased education spending boost academic achievement in public schools? In Illinois, spending appears to tell only part of the story; there are important factors other than money that impact school performance. Yet clearing a foundational bar for financial resources is usually necessary, if not always sufficient, to clear a foundational bar for academic performance in turn. Consistent with the consensus of school finance research, Raising Quality, Promoting Equity finds that additional dollars in districts and classrooms alone are not necessarily associated with stronger core performance outcomes. Across Illinois, there was a weak, but statistically significant, relationship between weighted overall 29 and instructional 30 spending and student achievement in math and reading in 2013-14. Once poverty levels were accounted for, weighted instructional 31 or operational 32 spending on their own i.e., in the absence of other data on district spending patterns could not explain differentiation in performance outcomes at the system level. Variance in spending levels among districts with comparable performance outcomes illustrates the murky relationship between spending and performance in Illinois. For example, among districts that were achieving eighty percent proficiency in reading and math in 2013-14 the basic floor for a rating of A or B in this study some districts spent around $5,000 per pupil in weighted dollars on instruction, while others spent upwards of $10,000. Indeed, across the state, many districts that spent $10,000 or more on instruction had lower performance outcomes than districts spending around $5,000. Greater expenditures were not uniformly tied to better academic performance in Illinois in 2013-14, even when levels of student need and cost of living were taken into account. Overall, however, adequately funded districts outperformed underfunded counterparts. Similarly, in weighted dollars, school districts with ratings of A or B averaged thousands more in spending per pupil than districts with ratings of C, D, or F. And at the district level, high levels of academic performance were exceedingly rare in the absence of adequate funding. 43 29 r(846) =.254, p <.001 30 r(846) =.408, p <.001 31 When districts' composite proficiency rates in reading and math were regressed on low-income population and weighted instructional spending per pupil, the effect of weighted instructional spending per pupil was statistically insignificant at the.05 level (p =.126). 32 When districts' composite proficiency rates in reading and math were regressed on low-income population and weighted operational spending per pupil, the effect of weighted operational spending per pupil was statistically insignificant at the.05 level (p =.851).
Chart 14: Wealth, Spending, and Performance $15,698 $12,206 $9,674 $9,210 $8,814 A B C D F Proficiency rates in adequately funded districts were nine points higher in math 33 and ten points higher in reading 34 than in underfunded districts. Four out of five performing schools in the state were in districts that were adequately funded. Of the 326 school districts that were underfunded or borderline underfunded, 316 were rated C, D, or F. Performing districts drew local revenue from a larger base of property wealth and could tax it at lower rates. These findings add nuance to the adage that you can t throw money at the problem. Additional revenue for school districts on its own does not seem likely to boost performance in all places. Disparities in funding adequacy, however, impact the ability of many districts to provide their students with core academic training. Increasing funding, especially to low-income and underfunded school districts, will not comprehensively address Illinois s scarcity of high-performing K-12 public schools in the absence of other changes to policy and practice. Data on the uses and effectiveness of spending, such as return on investment, are crucial context for funding and performance data. Yet ensuring adequate and equitable funding is a crucial piece of the school improvement puzzle in the state. Statewide performance outcomes are not likely to improve without doing so. 33 The difference was statistically significant. Adequately funded districts had higher proficiency rates in math (M = 61.7, SD = 15.0) than underfunded districts (M = 52.5, SD = 13.4), t(742) = -7.82, p <.001. 34 The difference was statistically significant. Adequately funded districts had higher proficiency rates in reading (M = 62.0, SD = 13.1) than underfunded districts (M = 52.3, SD = 11.7), t(742) = -9.38, p <.001. 44
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PART III: RETURN ON INVESTMENT INTRODUCTION Recent research in school finance suggests that substantial, long-term strategic investments in underperforming schools can improve outcomes in academic achievement, graduation, and other basic indicators of K-12 school quality especially for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. 35 And, as preceding sections of this analysis have demonstrated, many districts in Illinois particularly in poorer communities lack enough funding to provide the resources that students need. Enhancing revenue streams for many districts in the state is an important component of raising school quality and promoting equity across districts. Yet some questions remain unanswered from performance and funding data. In which districts can additional revenue alone be expected to make substantial impact on performance outcomes? In what places does funding appear necessary but not sufficient? Are there districts in which any amount of funding seems unlikely to make a dent without structural changes to policy and practice? In order to strategically target statewide reform efforts, data that measure the effectiveness of educational expenditures are crucial. Raising Quality, Promoting Equity analyzes return on investment (ROI) in Illinois public school districts to connect and supplement the data on performance and funding with information on the impact of school spending. In this report, ROI is an indicator of academic achievement per dollar spent. It measures the effectiveness of day-to-day spending for achieving proficiency in reading and math. After adjusting operational expenditures based on cost of living and the needs of the student body in a school district, ROI is calculated by dividing a district s composite proficiency rate by the amount of money spent per pupil on K-12 operations. Medium or high ROI suggests that districts are making good to excellent use of the resources at their disposal for the purposes of achieving proficiency in math and reading relative to other school districts in the state. Low ROI suggests that districts spending has limited impact on this core academic indicator. IFF s measure of ROI has a targeted purpose. It is not intended to be a comprehensive evaluation of district quality. Instead, it is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of district resource allocation and to guide strategic investment in school districts across Illinois based on districts current success in promoting high levels of academic performance in core subjects. ROI gauges whether funds are being used effectively to bring about proficiency in reading and math and, based on past performance, whether additional funds can be expected to have a significant impact on basic student outcomes. SECTION CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 35 Julien LaFortune, Jesse Rothstein, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 22011, February 2016; C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker C. Johnson, and Claudia Persico, The Effects of School Spending on Education and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from School Finance Reforms, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 131(1), February 2016, pp. 157-218. 46
Chart 15: Income, Performance, and Return on Investment (ROI) Low ROI Medium ROI High ROI Low Mid- High High Low Low- Mid Mid- High High Low Low- Mid Income Income Income Low- Mid Mid- High High C D F POVERTY, PERFORMANCE, AND RETURN ON INVESTMENT This section focuses specifically on school districts that had not attained a rating of A or B in 2013-14, as lowerperforming schools and districts will tend to be the center of statewide efforts to increase the impact of spending. In districts with high return on investment (ROI), expenditures were going the furthest in bringing about student achievement in math and reading in 2013-14. As the chart above demonstrates, most underperforming districts with high ROI were rated C or D: they were near or approaching, but had not yet reached, high levels of academic achievement in core subjects. Spending had a more positive impact on performance, and future revenue could be more effective in improving academic outcomes, in districts with high ROI. That districts can simultaneously be underperforming yet appear to be investment-ready is significant: it reinforces that, while money cannot solve all problems in K-12 schools, not every district that has yet to reach high levels of academic achievement in reading and math is making poor use of the resources at its disposal. Indeed, a considerable number of F-rated districts had high ROI in 2013-14. At the same time, however, many districts with a rating of F, as well as a substantial number of C- and D-rated districts, had low ROI in 2013-14. Based on past patterns in funding and performance, additional dollars alone seem less likely to contribute to performance in math and reading in these places at a high rate. 47
Of course, many of these F-rated school districts were underfunded or borderline underfunded. That a district s ROI is low or middling does not mean that it should not be eligible for additional funding especially if its funding levels are inadequate. Very few districts, even with the most careful financial practices, will be able to bring a high number of students up to grade level when resources are insufficient for the task at hand. Low or medium ROI does suggest, however, that an underfunded district would benefit from concerted fiscal or programmatic support in conjunction with additional revenue in order to bring about better student outcomes in core academic subjects. If the district is underfunded, new revenue streams could be tied hand-inhand with supports and incentives that encourage more effective resource allocation and the adoption of best practices from districts with higher performance and ROI. ROI, EQUITY, AND ADEQUACY Trends in K-12 educational ROI also underscore the inequities that are embedded in the structure of K-12 public education in Illinois. It is true that many lowincome and low-performing districts in Illinois had medium to high return on the resources that they had to invest. Even if these school districts were underfunded and/or underperforming, their spending was having a medium to high impact on improving reading and math outcomes for students. For example, sixteen percent of F-rated school districts had high ROI; about two thirds of these were located in low- or low-mid income communities. In many low-income school districts, then, spending was impactful even where funding was insufficient. As demonstrated by the concentration of low-income schools on the left side of the graph above, however, most districts that served large proportions of low-income students in Illinois in 2013-14 had low ROI outcomes. In these districts, operational spending had low impact on reading and math proficiency relative to the rest of the state. Particularly given that low-income communities paid substantially higher tax rates to support their K-12 public schools, it is noteworthy that spending in lowincome districts had less impact in terms of preparing them to succeed in reading and math. The prevalence of low-income districts with low ROI suggests that the education community should focus a significant share of comprehensive and targeted services on these districts in order to improve outcomes. At the same time, however, it should be noted that in districts that are severely underfunded as were the districts that most low-income students attended in 2013-14 it is possible that the amount of resources that districts are able to provide to students does not allow for high ROI even with the most efficient and careful financial and programmatic practices. That the return on inadequate investments would in many cases be low is unsurprising. SECTION CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 48
Chart 16: Return on Investment (ROI) by Funding Adequacy Threshold for High ROI Threshold for Medium ROI Underfunded Borderline Adequately Funded Indeed, to conclude that lower-income districts are poor candidates for investment would be premature. Across the state, ROI was better in underfunded and borderline underfunded districts than in adequately funded districts in 2013-14. On average, ROI was twenty percent higher in underfunded school districts and fifteen percent higher in borderline funded school districts than in adequately funded school districts. 36 The typical underfunded district had high ROI, while adequately funded districts tended to just clear the bar for medium ROI. Underfunded school districts, which were disproportionately attended by students from lowincome households, tended to have more impactful spending in 2013-14 than adequately funded districts. In many cases, then, shoring up the revenue streams of districts with inadequate funding levels can be expected to have a higher impact on core reading and math performance than investing financially in districts that have cleared a foundational level of funding. As the data presented in this section illustrate, the relationships among poverty, funding, performance, and return on investment are multifaceted. To address the gap between Illinois's goals for school performance and current outcomes in classrooms across the state, a broad view of statewide trends must be fused with a careful district-by-district analysis of academic outcomes, funding levels, and the effectiveness of spending. By understanding interplay among these indicators at the macro and micro levels and using data to shape school improvement, stakeholders in K-12 education can maximize the impact of their work and streamline progress towards a system that reaches every child. 36 A Kruskal-Wallis test revealed statistically significant differences in return on investment (ROI) by funding level, χ 2 (2 = 82.4, p <.001). A Dunn-Bonferroni post-hoc analysis revealed statistically significant differences in ROI between adequately funded and borderline underfunded districts. It also revealed 49 statistically significant differences in ROI between adequately funded districts and underfunded districts. It did not reveal statistically significant differences in ROI between underfunded and borderline underfunded districts.
Chart 17: Overhead Spending by Return on Investment (ROI) $0.42 $2,973 $2,167 $1,879 $0.37 $0.37 Low ROI Medium ROI High ROI Overhead Spending Per Dollar Spent on Instruction Low ROI Medium ROI High ROI Overhead Spending Per Pupil, Weighted ROI, SPENDING, AND PERFORMANCE Levels of return on investment (ROI) illuminate differentiation in overhead spending across the state. On the whole, districts with high ROI dedicated more of their money to instruction and instruction-adjacent activities and less to overhead and administrative functions than districts with lower ROI in 2013-14. For the purposes of this study, overhead costs include central office services, general administration, school administration, and maintenance. Districts with high ROI spent less on overhead than districts with low ROI in two key ways: Districts with high ROI spent less overall on overhead per pupil. Districts with high or medium ROI spent less on overhead relative to their expenditures on instruction. Compared to overhead expenses, instructional spending represented a greater share of the budget in districts with high and medium ROI than in districts with low ROI. SECTION CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 50
Map 6: Return on Investment, Study Areas ONLINE TOOL: www.iff.org/ilschoolstudy Evaluate and compare district Return on Investment (ROI) using the online tool, which allows used to zoom in and see individual districts ROI, along with a set of key financial and performance indicators. 51
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RECOMMENDATIONS Academic accountability, adequate and equitable resources, and financial stewardship should represent a unified statewide effort to improve school quality. Implement rigorous summative ratings that, among other criteria, meaningfully capture progress towards the absolute benchmark of promoting all or nearly all students to grade level, not merely performance outcomes relative to other schools in the state. Tailor supports to each school s rating. Reserve a designation of high-performing only for schools that have, among other achievements and benchmarks, successfully met the goal of promoting ninety percent of students to grade level in reading and math. Strategically target this three-part process based on the distribution of supply and demand across the state, using the service level and service gap together to identify where to direct resources and attention. Then, use performance, funding levels, and return on investment (ROI) as guideposts for how to improve school quality in a particular place. ACADEMIC ACCOUNTABILITY Set high standards for academic performance, and hold schools to them through a clear accountability system. In order to reach our state s goal of ninety percent proficiency in math and reading statewide by 2032, all schools and districts will need to do their part by equipping the vast majority of their students with foundational academic skills. A school should only be considered performing if it is meeting this benchmark. Reserve a designation of near-performing only for schools that, among other achievements and benchmarks, have proficiency levels that can feasibly be raised to the target of ninety percent in the near future without major investment or intervention. Provide a grace period by which these schools must reach the target of ninety percent before an improvement plan is required. Reserve a designation of underperforming for schools that, among other indicators, are not nearing the target of ninety percent proficiency but do not have chronically low levels of underperformance. Require an improvement plan and provide a grace period for progress before comprehensive supports are required. Reserve a designation of chronically underperforming for any school in which the majority of students do not finish the academic year on grade level. Provide comprehensive supports to these schools. The value of summative scores for school performance is their potential to be supportive, not punitive. As the 53
Illinois State Board of Education s (ISBE s) plan for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) states, all schools have something to learn from and share with their colleagues in a supportive community of practice. [A] summative determination should assist in creating a connection between schools and districts throughout the state. 37 Summative scores can be a pillar of a system-wide network of support, innovation, and mutual improvement but only if they accurately capture gradations in school performance relative to state goals. ADEQUATE AND EQUITABLE RESOURCES Guarantee adequate and equitable funding for every school in Illinois. Invest in underfunded schools and districts. First, establish an adequacy target for per-pupil funding for each school based on local and regional cost pressures, district size, and the educational needs of the student body. Then, guarantee that each school reaches its adequacy target in every academic year. Secure revenue streams by which the State of Illinois can fully compensate for disparities in local wealth and guarantee that all schools and districts reach their adequacy target each year. Publicize the ratio between the individualized adequacy target and actual per-pupil funding at the district level beginning immediately, and at the school level once school-level spending figures are available in compliance with ESSA. FINANCIAL STEWARDSHIP Empower local and regional stakeholders to allocate resources within school districts in ways that will maximize impact on school performance and climate. Provide data that allow stakeholders to understand district spending patterns in a broader context and diffuse best practices across the state. For example, include the following in the state s data dashboards: Data that allow stakeholders to compare spending decisions and funding levels with those of nearby or similar school and/or districts. A measure of how effectively schools and/or districts are using the funds at their disposal, such as return on investment. Incentivize districts to maximize spending on instruction and minimize spending on overhead. When districts identify cost savings, especially after eliminating overspending on overhead, or recoup new revenue, encourage them to funnel the dollars into the classroom. Revise the Limitation of Administrative Costs section of the School Code to limit overhead costs relative to instructional or operational spending rather than merely limiting year-to-year growth. Structure investments in districts and schools based on the effectiveness of current spending in increasing performance outcomes. Investment in districts with lower return on investment (ROI) should be accompanied by programmatic supports to increase the impact of spending. 37 Illinois State Board of Education, State Template for the Consolidated State Plan Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, April 2017, p. 95. 54
DISTRICT PROFILES: BRIGHT SPOTS FOR FUTURE INVESTMENT ONLINE TOOL www.iff.org/ilschoolstudy The data visualization suite that accompanies this report allows users to compare schools, districts, and study areas of their choosing with the state and with customizable sets of peers from a variety of perspectives. Users interested in their school, district, or region can see how their outcomes in performance, funding, and return on investment (ROI) stack up to those of nearby places, of demographically similar communities, or of the state as a whole. In academic year 2013-14, over a third of school districts in Illinois were underfunded or borderline underfunded. With adjustments for student need and cost of living, about one quarter of districts had at least three hundred dollars less than the minimum amount of revenue that the Illinois Education Funding Advisory Board (EFAB) recommended to guarantee high performance in an efficiently administered school district. An additional twelve percent of districts were within three hundred dollars of the EFAB minimum. Overall, nearly three out of five students in Illinois were enrolled in these underfunded or borderline underfunded school districts in 2013-14. Unsurprisingly, very few of the school districts that had inadequate or borderline funding were performing. Of the 326 school districts that were underfunded or borderline underfunded in 2013-14, 316 were rated C, D, or F. Return on investment, however, reveals that there were noteworthy positive outcomes in these districts even if they had not yet reached statewide goals to reach all or nearly all students with grade-level preparation in core subjects. Within underfunded and underperforming districts, about half (147) had high ROI in 2013-14. Overall, they were achieving reasonable academic results given the funding at their disposal. This section profiles three of these 147 bright spots for future investment. Two thirds of these districts were in communities with below-average property wealth, and just under half had above-average populations of lowincome students. Approximately half were suburban, often on the outer ring of their metropolitan area. There was also a disproportionate concentration of these districts in downstate Illinois. By providing a small crosssection of the diversity that these districts encompass, Raising Quality, Promoting Equity sketches the types of information that stakeholders can marshal in designing their school improvement efforts. 56
59.5% Chart 19: Student Demographics in Elgin-Area School District U-46 24.5% 14.3% 43.5% 12.3% 4.0% Elgin-Area SD U-46 State Average Elgin-Area SD U-46 State Average Elgin-Area SD U-46 Low-Income English Language Learners With Disabilities State Average Chart 18: Enrolled Students by School Performance in Elgin-Area School District U-46 vs. Illinois 1% 3% 13% 8% A 15% 29% B 19% C D 57% 55% F SD U-46 Elgin-Area School District U-46 enrolled over forty thousand students from eleven northwest suburbs of Chicago in Cook, DuPage, and Kane Counties. One of the municipalities that SD U-46 serves is Elgin, which is the sixth highest-need area that this study identifies. Overall, SD U-46 was keeping pace with state academic averages despite insufficient funding for its large populations of low-income students, English language learners, and children with disabilities. The district had low levels of overhead spending and high return on investment. Elgin-Area School District U-46 Statewide Access to A- and B-rated schools was lower in SD U-46 than at the state level in 2013-14. Ninety-nine percent of students in SD U-46 attended a C-, D-, or F-rated school, as compared to eighty-nine percent statewide. There was one performing school in the district, Prairieview 57
Chart 20: Funding and Wealth in Elgin-Area School District U-46 8.0% $8,672 $211,868 $7,384 4.3% $100,809 Elgin-Area SD U-46 State Recommendation Elgin-Area SD U-46 State Average Elgin-Area SD U-46 State Average State & Local Funding School Tax Rate Property Wealth Per Pupil Elementary School in Bartlett. Overall, however, SD U-46 was roughly on par with the state in terms of the proportion of students on grade level: fifty-five percent of SD U-46 students were proficient in reading in math, as opposed to fifty-nine percent in the average district. These performance outcomes become more noteworthy when the needs of SD U-46 student body are compared to state averages. In 2013-14, SD U-46 had thirty-seven percent more low-income students, over six times as many English language learners, and only slightly fewer students with disabilities than the average district. When funding levels are normalized to reflect the high cost of living in the Chicago metropolitan area and the additional costs necessary to provide a quality education to the subgroups listed above, SD U-46 received eightyfive percent of recommended funding levels. Despite the high tax rate in the district only twenty-two of the 858 districts analyzed in this report had higher rates than SD U-46 the district s low property wealth and the lack of sufficient revenue from the state limited funding. SD U-46, which was nearly keeping pace with the state academically despite a funding gap and a high-need student body, had high return on investment. It also had one of the lowest ratios between overhead and instructional spending in the state: for every dollar spent in the classroom, SD U-46 spent only thirty-one cents on overhead. Overall, K-12 operational expenditure in this high-poverty, lowwealth school district had a high impact on reading and math outcomes. It seems likely to put additional funds to good use, but the district appeared to be tapping out its local resources in 2013-14 and would need additional state support in order to provide students, teachers, and school leaders with more resources. 58
64.1% Chart 21: Student Demographics in Vienna School District 55 13.6% 14.3% 4.0% 43.5% 1.6% Vienna SD 55 State Average Vienna SD 55 State Average Vienna SD 55 Low-Income English Language Learners With Disabilities State Average VIENNA SD 55 In 2013-14, Vienna SD 55 enrolled over four hundred students in a single elementary school, Vienna Grade School, near the southern tip of Illinois in Johnson County. Overall, Vienna was exceeding state academic averages despite insufficient funding for its large populations of low-income students, English language learners, and children with disabilities. The district had low levels of overhead spending and high return on investment. Vienna Grade School is a D-rated school based on the metrics developed in this study. Sixty-four percent of students in Vienna SD 55 were on grade level in reading in math, clearing the statewide level by a full six points. Moreover, Vienna SD 55 was successfully preparing a relatively high-need student body to achieve above the state average. More than three out of five students in the district came from low-income households, nearly fifty percent higher than the state average. The district had few English language learners and a near-average population of children with disabilities. When funding levels are normalized to reflect cost of living and the additional costs necessary to provide a quality education to the subgroups listed above, Vienna SD 55 received only seventy-eight percent of recommended funding levels. The district s school tax rate was relatively low, suggesting that some additional revenue could potentially be raised locally, but the area s low property wealth just over a third of the state average limited the amount of funding that could generated from local resources. 59
$8,672 Chart 22: Funding and Wealth in Vienna School District 55 4.3% $211,868 $6,749 3.0% $71,041 Vienna SD 55 State Recommendation Vienna SD 55 State Average Vienna SD 55 State Average State & Local Funding School Tax Rate Property Wealth Per Pupil Vienna SD-55, which was ahead of the state academically despite a funding gap and a relatively high-need student body, had high return on investment. It also had one of the lowest ratios between overhead and instructional spending in the state: for every dollar spent in the classroom, Vienna SD-55 spent only twenty-two cents on overhead. Overall, K-12 operational expenditures in this high-poverty, low-wealth school district had a high impact on reading and math outcomes. The district seems likely to put additional funds to good use. Some may be able to be sourced locally, but it appears likely to need additional state support in order to provide students, teachers, and school leaders with more resources. SECTION CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 60
Chart 24: Student Demographics in Collinsville School District 10 58.0% 6.5% 15.0% 14.3% 43.5% 4.0% Collinsville SD 10 State Average Collinsville SD 10 State Average Collinsville SD 10 Low-Income English Language Learners With Disabilities State Average Chart 23: Enrolled Students by School Performance in Collinsville School District 10 3% A B 26% 8% 15% 19% COLLINSVILLE CUSD 10 In 2013-14, Collinsville Community Unit School District 10 enrolled over six thousand students across four suburbs of St. Louis. The district had eight elementary schools, two middle schools, and a high school. C D F 74% Collinsville SD 10 55% Statewide All students in CUSD 10 attended a school with a rating below B, compared to eighty-nine percent of students statewide. Overall, however, CUSD 10 was nearly on par with the state in terms of the proportion of students who were on grade level: fifty-three percent of CUSD 10 s students were proficient in reading in math, as opposed to fifty-nine percent in the average school district. These performance outcomes become more noteworthy when the needs of the CUSD 10 student body are 61
Chart 25: Funding and Wealth in Collinsville School District 10 $8,672 4.5% 4.3% $211,868 $6,272 $106,555 Collinsville SD 10 State Recommendation Collinsville SD 10 State Average Collinsville SD 10 State Average State & Local Funding School Tax Rate Property Wealth Per Pupil compared to state averages. CUSD 10 had over a third more low-income students, fifty percent more English language learners, and five percent more students with disabilities than the average district. When figures are normalized to reflect cost of living and the additional resources necessary to provide a quality education to the subgroups listed above, CUSD 10 received seventy-two percent of recommended funding levels. Despite the above-average school tax rate in the district, low property wealth and a lack of sufficient revenue from the state limited available funding. K-12 operational expenditures in this high-poverty, lowwealth school district had a high impact on reading and math outcomes. It seems likely to put additional funds to good use, but the district appears to be tapping out its local resources and will need additional state support in order to provide students, teachers, and school leaders with more resources. CUSD 10, which was nearly keeping pace with the state academically despite a funding gap and a high-need student body, had high return on investment. Overall, 62
IN DEPTH: CHICAGO City of Chicago School District 299 commonly known as Chicago Public Schools 38 is the country s thirdlargest school district and enrolls nearly twenty percent of public school students in Illinois. With an annual budget in excess of five billion dollars, CPS is at the center of statewide discussions about education and fiscal policy. The district is also a frequent topic of conversation and analysis in the school reform community across the country. A comprehensive reform agenda in Illinois must address, but not overemphasize, public education in Chicago. Needs Assessment: School Performance. Consistent with statewide trends, students in Chicago faced a shortage of K-12 public school options that were meeting the statewide goal of preparing all or nearly all students to achieve at grade level in 2013-14. Six percent of CPS students had access to a school that was rated A or B in 2013-14 based on the scale developed for this study, lower than the statewide service level of twelve percent. None of the three grade spans emerges as significantly more in need of quality seats than any other within Chicago. Each grade span s level of need was in line with its share of the CPS student body. Citywide, about half of demand was in elementary schools, just under a quarter in middle schools, and just over a quarter in high schools; the service gap was distributed across the city with nearly identical proportions. Largely because of Chicago s network of high-performing magnet secondary schools, the service level in the city was marginally higher in grades 9-12 than in grades K-5 or grades 6-8. Across the city, however, nearly nineteen out of twenty students lacked access to an A- or B-rated K-12 option. In eighty-four percent of the study areas in Chicago, less than one in ten K-12 students had access to an A- or B-rated public school. Unlike at the state level, however, none of the study areas in Chicago completely lacked access to high-performing schools, owing to population density and the availability of schools that accepted students from across the city. Citywide, however, over ninety percent of students were not able to access an A- or B-rated school. In only one Grade Division Table 6: Supply and Demand by Grade Division, Chicago Performing Schools Demand Supply Level Percent of District K-5 25 177,006 8,636 168,370 5% 50% 6-8 31 83,788 4,621 79,167 6% 23% 9-12 7 100,133 10,138 89,998 10% 27% K-12 32* 360,927 28,794 337,532 6% 100% *Because some schools overlap grade divisions,the number of performing schools may not sum. 38 Two state-commissioned public charter schools located in Chicago in 2013-14 served the city s students but were not authorized by City of Chicago School District 299. For the purposes of this report, Chicago Public Schools refers to all public schools serving residents of Chicago, including the two statecommissioned charter schools; City of Chicago School District 299 refers specifically to the district. 63
Map 7: Level, City of Chicago 64
Chart 26: Enrolled Students by School Performance in Chicago Public Schools 4% 3% 3% 6% 8% A 12% 15% B C D F 76% Chicago Public Schools 19% 55% Statewide study area, covering the Mount Greenwood neighborhood, did more than a quarter of students have access to an A- or B-rated K-12 public school. In a handful of other study areas in Chicago north and east of Interstate 90, between ten and twenty-five percent of students could access an A- or B-rated school. Yet from a citywide perspective, a highperforming K-12 public school option was unavailable to most students in 2013-14. Poverty, Performance, and Progress in Chicago. The challenges for school improvement in the largest city in the state are considerable. A comprehensive agenda must improve a system in which nearly all schools have not reached statewide goals of delivering grade-level preparation in core subjects to a substantial proportion of roughly 400,000 enrolled students. The relative severity of the lack of access to performing schools between the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, however, should not be overstated particularly given the level of need that public schools in Chicago must meet. CPS is constitutive of the broader public education system in Illinois. Within this system, there is a strong inverse relationship between the percent of a district s students that live in low-income households and academic achievement in math and reading. This wider context shapes outcomes in Chicago in two ways. First, CPS internally mirrors the relationship between poverty and performance that emerges at the state level. Higher-income students in Chicago had better-performing public school options than lower-income students in 2013-14. As the proportion of a district s population that was below the poverty line increased, proficiency in math and reading decreased. 39 Moreover, over half of A- and B-rated schools were magnet schools whose student bodies tend to under-represent children from low-income households and students of color. 40 Overall, the relationship between poverty and performance was slightly less regressive within Chicago than at the state level, but poor students had disproportionately lower-performing K-12 options than more affluent peers. In this way, Chicago s schools are, at least to an extent, products of the statewide context in which they are embedded. Second, CPS represents one pole of Illinois s highly unequal educational system. In 2013-14, CPS educated over 345,000 low-income students, 68,000 English language learners, and 55,000 individuals with disabilities. In other words, CPS s student body had twice the proportion of low-income students, over four times the proportion of English language learners, and about the same proportion of students with 39 r(549) = -.722, p <.001. 40 A 2016 analysis found that selective enrollment and magnet schools in CPS enrolled children of color and low-income students at lower rates than other public schools around the city. See Kimberly Quick, Chicago Public Schools: Ensuring Diversity in Selective Enrollment and Magnet Schools, The Century Foundation, October 2016. 65
Chart 27: Poverty and Performance in Chicago Public Schools 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Students Eligible for Free or Reduced-Price Meals Chart 28: Student Demographics in Chicago Public Schools 85.7% 17.0% 13.8% 14.3% 43.5% 4.0% CPS State Average CPS State Average Low-Income English Language Learners With Disabilities CPS State Average 66
Table 7: Supply and Demand by Grade Division, Chicago, High-Need Areas Grade Division Performing Schools Demand Supply Level Percent of District K-5 0 46,897 679 46,218 1% 14% 6-8 0 22,441 607 21,834 3% 6% 9-12 0 28,008 2,406 25,606 9% 8% K-12 0 97,347 3,689 93,658 4% 28% disabilities as the average school district in Illinois. Of the 858 public school districts analyzed in this study, only twenty-six had student bodies with higher per-pupil need for specialized educational programming than CPS, and no district was obligated to provide this programming at such scale. Illinois as a whole, of course, struggles to provide high-performing public school options for lowincome communities. That access to high-performing schools would be diminished in Chicago is unsurprising in the context of an inequitable statewide landscape. And yet, despite the structural inequities with which Chicago Public Schools must contend and the lack of high-performing K-12 options from which parents have to choose, there are meaningful signs of progress in Chicago s public schools with regard to academic performance. For example, based on the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), steep and continuing growth in Chicago across and within student subgroups over the last fifteen years has buoyed otherwise stagnant or declining academic performance elsewhere in Illinois. 41 Moreover, graduation rates across the city increased by over twenty percentage points between 1998 and 2014, and students showed higher levels of academic achievement even amidst increases in the rigor of coursework. 42 So while there remains substantial work to do to increase access to performing schools for Chicago students, there are important gains even in the face of major systemic obstacles. High-Need Areas. Just over a quarter of the need for quality K-12 public school seats in Chicago was concentrated in the seven high-need areas that this study identifies. These study areas are the sections of the city in which the largest numbers of children did not have access to a school with a rating of A or B in 2013-14. The following twenty community areas are partially or fully contained within the high-need areas: Belmont Cragin Chicago Lawn Hermosa North Lawndale West Elsdon Bridgeport East Side Lower West Side South Chicago West Lawn Archer Heights Brighton Park Fuller Park McKinley Park South Deering Avalon Park Calumet Heights Gage Park New City South Lawndale Geographically, almost all of the territory of the high-need areas is southwest of Interstate 90. Five of these seven study areas are located in a cluster roughly bound by the Interstate 290 to the north, Central Park Avenue to the west, 75th Street to the south, and Interstate 90-94 to the East. 41 Paul Zavitkovsky and Steven Tozer, Upstate/Downstate: Changing Patterns of Achievement, Demographics and School Effectiveness in Illinois Public Schools, University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Urban Education Leadership, Spring 2017, 4. 67 42 Elaine M. Allensworth, Kaleen Healey, Julia A. Gwynne, and René Crespin, High School Graduation Rates through Two Decades of District Change: The Influence of Policies, Data Records, and Demographic Shifts, University of Chicago Consotrium on School Research, June 2016.
Map 8:, City of Chicago 68
There were no A- or B-rated schools located within the boundaries of Chicago s high-need areas in 2013-14. An estimated 3,689 seats were available to students residing in these communities from A- or B-rated options in other community areas, such as magnet schools that accepted students from across the city. As the previous section shows, however, there was substantial need for high-performing public schools in every community area in Chicago. Addressing the highneed areas will have a disproportionate impact on the service gap in Chicago s public schools, but it will not address the majority of the need in the city. Funding and Return on Investment in Chicago Public Schools. The level of need of the student body in Chicago is crucial to understanding performance, funding, and return on investment trends in CPS. Low-income students, English language learners, and individuals with disabilities need educational resources that are tailored to their learning styles. Chicago has some of the highest proportions of students with intensive educational needs in Illinois and is located in the most costly labor market in the state. For these reasons, CPS requires more perpupil funding than almost any district in Illinois to meet a baseline of academic achievement. CPS was underfunded in 2013-14. When funding levels are normalized to reflect the high cost of living in the Chicago metropolitan area and the additional costs necessary to provide a quality education to the subgroups listed above, the district received seventy-one percent of the Foundation Level (FL) that the Education Funding Advisory Board (EFAB) recommended for 2013-14. Yet despite this budgetary shortfall, CPS had medium return on investment (ROI). Relative to its peers, CPS s day-today spending had decent impact on the ability of students to read, write, and do math at grade level. Furthermore, CPS spent a quarter on overhead for every dollar it spent in classrooms in 2013-14. Fewer than three dozen of the 855 districts analyzed for this study had a better overhead-to-instruction ratio. These spending levels are largely the result of the district s efforts to cut over seven hundred million dollars in spending, mostly but not entirely on administration and other noninstructional goods and services. 43 The district has made major progress in creating administrative efficiencies in order to widen the portion of the budget that can reach students and teachers more directly. All in all, however, local resources and budgetary streamlining alone appear insufficient to allow CPS to address funding inadequacy and increase spending on activities that will prepare more students to achieve on grade level in reading and math. Property tax increases in the city are capped based on the rate of inflation.43 And, while property in Chicago is more valuable than in most high-poverty districts in Illinois, property wealth is still a quarter lower than the state average. Any additional revenue that can be raised locally for public schools in Chicago will probably not close the bulk of the district s funding gap. In the absence of sufficient compensatory income from higher levels of government, it will be difficult for CPS to shore up its revenue streams. Alongside targeted and comprehensive efforts to increase the effectiveness of instructional programming, CPS should be considered a candidate for additional financial resources. More state funding alone for CPS will not solve the district s financial problems, but the situation seems unlikely to improve without it. 43 Josh McGee, Chicago Crowd-Out: How Rising Pension Costs Harm Current Teachers and Students, Manhattan Institute Issue Brief, May 2016. 69
$8,672 Chart 29: Funding and Wealth in Chicago Public Schools 4.3% $211,868 $6,223 3.66% $161,232 CPS State Recommendation CPS State Average State & Local Funding School Tax Rate Property Wealth Per Pupil CPS State Average 70
APPENDIX A: SUPPLY AND DEMAND BY GRADE LEVEL AND STUDY AREA Grades K-12 (Overall) Grades K-5 Rank Study Area Demand Supply Level Demand Supply High-Need Areas 1 Sangamon County 28,767 731 28,036 3% 13,059 364 12,695 2 Chicago: Chicago Lawn, West Lawn 23,313 897 22,416 4% 11,487 161 11,326 3 Chicago: Archer Heights, Brighton Park 21,527 776 20,752 4% 9,486 139 9,347 4 Champaign County 21,425 116 21,309 1% 9,265 63 9,202 5 Elgin 19,898 899 19,000 5% 9,348 612 8,737 6 Chicago: Lawndale 19,629 738 18,891 4% 9,913 135 9,777 7 McLean County 22,403 3,974 18,429 18% 10,112 3,395 6,717 8 Burlington, Pingree Grove, Carpentersville 17,958 729 17,228 4% 8,676 373 8,303 9 Rock Island County 17,787 0 17,787 0% 7,071 0 7,071 10 Cicero 17,126 4 17,121 0% 8,518 1 8,517 11 Rockford, Cherry Valley 17,076 665 16,411 4% 8,092 346 7,746 12 Kankakee County 16,652 9 16,644 0% 7,190 6 7,184 13 Chicago: Belmont Cragin, Hermosa 16,575 738 15,837 4% 8,423 132 8,291 14 LaSalle County 16,238 85 16,154 1% 6,950 61 6,889 15 South Elgin, Bartlett, Streamwood 16,544 767 15,777 5% 7,552 485 7,067 16 Round Lake Beach, Volo 16,007 257 15,750 2% 6,946 169 6,777 17 Macon County 14,686 0 14,686 0% 6,733 0 6,733 18 Crystal Lawns 16,147 931 15,216 6% 6,663 466 6,197 19 Richton Park, University Park, Crete, Willowbrook 13,903 520 13,383 4% 5,218 520 4,698 20 DeKalb County 14,206 1 14,205 0% 6,180 0 6,179 21 Chicago: New City, Fuller Park 13,865 570 13,295 4% 7,268 101 7,168 22 Vermilion County 12,238 2 12,236 0% 5,671 1 5,670 23 Chicago: Lower West Side 13,514 641 12,872 5% 5,980 218 5,762 24 Peoria 13,667 923 12,743 7% 6,780 352 6,428 25 Boone County 9,870 5 9,864 0% 4,233 2 4,231 26 Cahokia, Millstadt, East Carondelet 12,736 0 12,736 0% 4,936 0 4,936 27 Chicago: South Chicago, Calumet Heights, East Side 13,258 590 12,669 4% 6,604 96 6,508 28 Williamson County 9,602 0 9,602 0% 4,346 0 4,346 29 Rockdale, Elwood, Ingalls Park 12,572 158 12,414 1% 5,889 158 5,731 30 Adams County 8,429 0 8,429 0% 3,720 0 3,720 31 Lakemoor, Johnsburg, Holiday Hills 12,501 254 12,247 2% 5,148 254 4,894 71
. Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Level Percent of K-12 Demand Supply Level Percent of K-12 Demand Supply Level 3% 45% 6,904 367 6,538 5% 23% 8,803 0 8,803 0% 31% 1% 51% 5,388 150 5,238 3% 23% 6,438 587 5,852 9% 26% 1% 45% 4,650 128 4,522 3% 22% 7,391 508 6,882 7% 33% 1% 43% 5,387 53 5,333 1% 25% 6,774 0 6,774 0% 32% 7% 46% 4,529 216 4,313 5% 23% 6,021 71 5,950 1% 31% 1% 52% 4,739 120 4,619 3% 24% 4,978 483 4,495 10% 24% 34% 36% 5,618 256 5,363 5% 29% 6,673 323 6,350 5% 34% 4% 48% 4,138 356 3,782 9% 22% 5,144 0 5,144 0% 30% 0% 40% 4,331 0 4,331 0% 24% 6,386 0 6,386 0% 36% 0% 50% 4,241 1 4,240 0% 25% 4,366 3 4,364 0% 25% 4% 47% 4,085 319 3,766 8% 23% 4,899 0 4,899 0% 30% 0% 43% 4,231 3 4,228 0% 25% 5,231 0 5,231 0% 31% 2% 52% 3,576 120 3,456 3% 22% 4,577 487 4,090 11% 26% 1% 43% 3,975 24 3,951 1% 24% 5,313 0 5,313 0% 33% 6% 45% 3,875 264 3,610 7% 23% 5,118 18 5,100 0% 32% 2% 43% 3,449 87 3,362 3% 21% 5,611 1 5,611 0% 36% 0% 46% 3,655 0 3,655 0% 25% 4,297 0 4,297 0% 29% 7% 41% 4,158 465 3,692 11% 24% 5,327 0 5,327 0% 35% 10% 35% 3,261 0 3,261 0% 24% 5,425 0 5,425 0% 41% 0% 44% 3,525 1 3,525 0% 25% 4,501 0 4,501 0% 32% 1% 54% 3,401 95 3,306 3% 25% 3,196 375 2,821 12% 21% 0% 46% 2,969 1 2,968 0% 24% 3,598 0 3,598 0% 29% 4% 45% 2,993 78 2,915 3% 23% 4,540 345 4,195 8% 33% 5% 50% 3,136 315 2,822 10% 22% 3,750 257 3,493 7% 27% 0% 43% 2,444 3 2,441 0% 25% 3,193 0 3,193 0% 32% 0% 39% 3,254 0 3,254 0% 26% 4,546 0 4,546 0% 36% 1% 51% 3,304 95 3,209 3% 25% 3,350 399 2,951 12% 23% 0% 45% 2,304 0 2,304 0% 24% 2,952 0 2,952 0% 31% 3% 46% 2,839 0 2,839 0% 23% 3,843 0 3,843 0% 31% 0% 44% 2,030 0 2,030 0% 24% 2,679 0 2,679 0% 32% 5% 40% 3,091 0 3,091 0% 25% 4,262 0 4,262 0% 35% Percent of K-12 72
Grades K-12 (Overall) Grades K-5 Rank Study Area Demand Supply Level Demand Supply High-Need Areas Mid-High-Need Areas 32 Oswego, Boulder Hill 15,157 2,989 12,168 20% 7,242 2,981 4,261 33 Grundy County 8,207 176 8,032 2% 3,415 110 3,305 34 Chicago: Lincoln Park, Lakeview 15,042 3,070 11,972 20% 7,056 1,908 5,148 35 Ogle County 8,176 633 7,543 8% 3,404 633 2,771 36 Woodridge, Lisle, Downers Grove 14,430 2,550 11,880 18% 5,578 1,319 4,259 37 Lake Villa, Fox Lake Hills, Channel Lake 11,805 10 11,795 0% 4,467 6 4,461 38 Knox County 7,231 0 7,231 0% 3,260 0 3,260 39 Aurora (Central) 12,140 376 11,764 3% 6,169 195 5,974 40 Waukegan 11,811 132 11,680 1% 5,425 45 5,381 41 Henry County 7,333 428 6,904 6% 3,321 428 2,892 42 North Aurora 11,521 6 11,515 0% 5,269 4 5,265 43 Whiteside County 6,566 32 6,534 0% 2,171 32 2,139 44 Granite City, Hartford, Wood River 11,467 0 11,467 0% 4,969 0 4,969 45 Chicago: Logan Square 11,916 473 11,443 4% 6,044 91 5,953 46 Stephenson County 6,250 0 6,250 0% 2,670 0 2,670 47 Chicago: Avondale, North Center, Irving Park 13,097 1,938 11,159 15% 6,777 1,148 5,629 48 Macoupin County 6,130 0 6,130 0% 2,363 0 2,363 49 Homewood, Glenwood, Lansing 11,083 9 11,074 0% 3,954 9 3,945 50 Highland, Collinsville, Alhambra, Maryville 11,044 79 10,966 1% 4,585 44 4,542 51 Woodford County 6,284 247 6,037 4% 2,640 247 2,393 52 Hanover Park, Carol Stream 12,893 2,020 10,873 16% 5,620 1,628 3,992 53 Barrington, Lake Barrington 14,865 4,064 10,801 27% 5,882 2,920 2,962 54 Jackson County 5,916 0 5,916 0% 2,514 0 2,514 55 Roscoe, Machesney Park, Loves Park 11,383 604 10,778 5% 4,490 475 4,015 56 Marion County 5,865 0 5,865 0% 2,538 0 2,538 57 Summit, Burbank, Bridgeview 10,804 164 10,639 2% 5,087 163 4,924 58 Hoffman Estates 16,003 5,374 10,630 34% 7,362 2,789 4,572 59 Jefferson County 5,607 0 5,607 0% 2,611 0 2,611 60 Lombard, Villa Park 12,088 1,573 10,516 13% 5,120 1,031 4,089 61 Franklin County 5,397 0 5,397 0% 2,242 0 2,242 62 Dixmoor, Harvey, Blue Island 10,416 0 10,416 0% 5,033 0 5,033 63 Palatine 13,232 2,908 10,324 22% 5,725 1,073 4,652 73
. Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Level Percent of K-12 Demand Supply Level Percent of K-12 Demand 41% 35% 3,655 9 3,646 0% 30% 4,261 0 4,261 0% 35% 3% 41% 2,029 66 1,963 3% 24% 2,763 0 2,763 0% 34% 27% 43% 2,753 857 1,895 31% 16% 5,233 305 4,928 6% 41% 19% 37% 2,007 0 2,007 0% 27% 2,765 0 2,765 0% 37% 24% 36% 3,452 498 2,954 14% 25% 5,400 733 4,667 14% 39% 0% 38% 3,525 4 3,521 0% 30% 3,812 0 3,812 0% 32% 0% 45% 1,692 0 1,692 0% 23% 2,280 0 2,280 0% 32% 3% 51% 2,771 181 2,590 7% 22% 3,200 0 3,200 0% 27% 1% 46% 2,542 34 2,508 1% 21% 3,844 53 3,791 1% 32% 13% 42% 1,641 0 1,641 0% 24% 2,371 0 2,371 0% 34% 0% 46% 2,752 1 2,751 0% 24% 3,500 0 3,500 0% 30% 1% 33% 1,723 0 1,723 0% 26% 2,672 0 2,672 0% 41% 0% 43% 2,854 0 2,854 0% 25% 3,644 0 3,644 0% 32% 2% 52% 2,889 76 2,814 3% 25% 2,982 307 2,675 10% 23% 0% 43% 1,456 0 1,456 0% 23% 2,124 0 2,124 0% 34% 17% 50% 2,963 463 2,500 16% 22% 3,357 327 3,030 10% 27% 0% 39% 1,620 0 1,620 0% 26% 2,147 0 2,147 0% 35% 0% 36% 2,702 0 2,702 0% 24% 4,427 0 4,427 0% 40% 1% 41% 2,675 35 2,640 1% 24% 3,784 0 3,784 0% 35% 9% 40% 1,577 0 1,577 0% 26% 2,067 0 2,067 0% 34% 29% 37% 2,892 278 2,614 10% 24% 4,381 113 4,268 3% 39% 50% 27% 3,744 1,060 2,684 28% 25% 5,239 84 5,155 2% 48% 0% 42% 1,416 0 1,416 0% 24% 1,986 0 1,986 0% 34% 11% 37% 3,044 129 2,915 4% 27% 3,848 0 3,848 0% 36% 0% 43% 1,390 0 1,390 0% 24% 1,937 0 1,937 0% 33% 3% 46% 2,441 1 2,440 0% 23% 3,276 0 3,276 0% 31% 38% 43% 3,618 1,465 2,153 40% 20% 5,024 1,119 3,904 22% 37% 0% 47% 1,294 0 1,294 0% 23% 1,702 0 1,702 0% 30% 20% 39% 2,690 354 2,336 13% 22% 4,278 188 4,091 4% 39% 0% 42% 1,312 0 1,312 0% 24% 1,842 0 1,842 0% 34% 0% 48% 2,483 0 2,483 0% 24% 2,900 0 2,900 0% 28% 19% 45% 2,996 800 2,196 27% 21% 4,511 1,035 3,476 23% 34% Supply Level Percent of K-12 74
Grades K-12 (Overall) Grades K-5 Rank Study Area Demand Supply Level Demand Supply Mid-High-Need Areas 64 Livingston County 5,248 74 5,174 1% 2,188 74 2,114 65 Durand, Pecatonica, Winnebago 10,834 535 10,299 5% 4,422 230 4,193 66 Gurnee 10,224 87 10,137 1% 3,975 52 3,923 67 Fulton County 5,118 0 5,118 0% 2,324 0 2,324 68 Bolingbrook 10,499 428 10,071 4% 4,704 121 4,583 69 Bureau County 4,718 0 4,718 0% 1,919 0 1,919 70 Lebanon, Mascoutah, Freeburg, New Athens 10,012 33 9,979 0% 4,393 32 4,361 71 Wheaton, Warrenville 12,913 3,003 9,909 23% 5,572 2,704 2,868 72 Effingham County 4,409 0 4,409 0% 1,702 0 1,702 73 Frankfort Square, Frankfort 10,648 801 9,847 8% 3,745 801 2,944 74 Christian County 4,323 0 4,323 0% 1,545 0 1,545 75 Chicago: Lincoln Square, Albany Park 10,233 407 9,826 4% 5,109 82 5,026 76 Berwyn, Stickney 9,819 0 9,819 0% 5,001 0 5,001 77 Monroe County 4,247 0 4,247 0% 1,485 0 1,485 78 Chicago: West Town, Near West Side 10,204 410 9,794 4% 5,034 86 4,948 79 Chillicothe, Princeville, Dunlap, Bartonville 13,041 3,293 9,748 25% 6,187 1,333 4,854 80 Morgan County 4,204 0 4,204 0% 1,931 0 1,931 81 Chicago: Roseland, Pullman, Riverdale 10,219 526 9,694 5% 4,765 84 4,681 82 Lee County 4,192 0 4,192 0% 1,670 0 1,670 83 Algonquin 10,496 859 9,637 8% 4,165 478 3,686 84 Plainfield 11,185 1,613 9,573 14% 5,011 1,036 3,975 85 Montgomery County 4,014 0 4,014 0% 1,723 0 1,723 86 Chicago: Auburn Gresham 9,840 502 9,338 5% 4,715 79 4,636 87 Iroquois County 4,095 119 3,976 3% 1,595 119 1,476 88 Evanston 9,918 795 9,122 8% 5,057 795 4,262 89 Wood Dale, Bensenville 10,452 1,442 9,010 14% 4,199 738 3,461 90 Clinton County 4,341 407 3,934 9% 2,003 276 1,727 91 Crystal Lake, Lakewood 10,479 1,473 9,006 14% 4,232 1,464 2,768 92 East Peoria, Pekin 9,176 174 9,002 2% 3,629 114 3,515 93 Randolph County 3,923 0 3,923 0% 1,743 0 1,743 94 South Holland, Calumet City 8,975 0 8,975 0% 3,622 0 3,622 75
. Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Level Percent of K-12 Demand Supply Level Percent of K-12 Demand 3% 41% 1,279 0 1,279 0% 25% 1,782 0 1,782 0% 34% 5% 41% 2,278 306 1,973 13% 19% 4,133 0 4,133 0% 40% 1% 39% 2,504 35 2,469 1% 24% 3,745 0 3,745 0% 37% 0% 45% 1,218 0 1,218 0% 24% 1,576 0 1,576 0% 31% 3% 46% 2,506 116 2,389 5% 24% 3,289 190 3,099 6% 31% 0% 41% 1,258 0 1,258 0% 27% 1,540 0 1,540 0% 33% 1% 44% 2,339 1 2,338 0% 23% 3,280 0 3,280 0% 33% 49% 29% 3,017 243 2,774 8% 28% 4,324 56 4,268 1% 43% 0% 39% 1,055 0 1,055 0% 24% 1,651 0 1,651 0% 37% 21% 30% 2,679 0 2,679 0% 27% 4,224 0 4,224 0% 43% 0% 36% 1,166 0 1,166 0% 27% 1,612 0 1,612 0% 37% 2% 51% 2,242 67 2,175 3% 22% 2,882 258 2,625 9% 27% 0% 51% 2,387 0 2,387 0% 24% 2,430 0 2,430 0% 25% 0% 35% 1,172 0 1,172 0% 28% 1,589 0 1,589 0% 37% 2% 51% 2,401 60 2,341 3% 24% 2,770 264 2,506 10% 26% 22% 50% 2,878 832 2,046 29% 21% 3,975 1,127 2,848 28% 29% 0% 46% 1,023 0 1,023 0% 24% 1,250 0 1,250 0% 30% 2% 48% 2,442 85 2,357 3% 24% 3,012 356 2,656 12% 27% 0% 40% 1,068 0 1,068 0% 25% 1,454 0 1,454 0% 35% 11% 38% 2,641 381 2,260 14% 23% 3,691 0 3,691 0% 38% 21% 42% 2,861 338 2,523 12% 26% 3,313 238 3,075 7% 32% 0% 43% 971 0 971 0% 24% 1,320 0 1,320 0% 33% 2% 50% 2,504 78 2,426 3% 26% 2,621 345 2,276 13% 24% 7% 37% 1,065 0 1,065 0% 27% 1,434 0 1,434 0% 36% 16% 47% 2,101 0 2,101 0% 23% 2,759 0 2,759 0% 30% 18% 38% 2,339 242 2,098 10% 23% 3,913 462 3,451 12% 38% 14% 44% 1,016 131 885 13% 23% 1,322 0 1,322 0% 34% 35% 31% 1,883 8 1,875 0% 21% 4,364 0 4,364 0% 48% 3% 39% 2,248 10 2,238 0% 25% 3,300 50 3,250 2% 36% 0% 44% 883 0 883 0% 23% 1,297 0 1,297 0% 33% 0% 40% 2,244 0 2,244 0% 25% 3,109 0 3,109 0% 35% Supply Level Percent of K-12 76
Grades K-12 (Overall) Grades K-5 Rank Study Area Demand Supply Level Demand Supply Moderate-Need Areas 95 Coles County 3,899 0 3,899 0% 1,225 0 1,225 96 Woodstock, Hebron, Richmond, Spring, Grove 8,983 52 8,931 1% 3,693 43 3,650 97 Evergreen Park, Oak Lawn 8,854 0 8,854 0% 3,691 0 3,691 98 Saline County 3,477 0 3,477 0% 1,388 0 1,388 99 Aurora/Naperville 21,991 13,218 8,772 60% 9,399 6,354 3,045 100 McDonough County 3,354 0 3,354 0% 1,546 0 1,546 101 Chicago: Dunning 9,156 418 8,738 5% 4,728 76 4,652 102 Chicago: Humboldt Park 9,074 429 8,645 5% 4,934 79 4,856 103 Logan County 3,120 37 3,084 1% 1,287 37 1,250 104 Chicago: Loop, Near Southside, Armour Square 9,613 1,016 8,597 11% 5,459 755 4,704 105 North Lake, Melrose Park 8,798 214 8,583 2% 4,330 0 4,330 106 Shelby County 2,907 0 2,907 0% 1,206 0 1,206 107 Joliet 8,756 203 8,553 2% 4,605 163 4,442 108 Fayette County 2,902 0 2,902 0% 1,200 0 1,200 109 Yorkville, Plano, Millbrook, Newark 8,744 194 8,550 2% 3,917 159 3,757 110 Shorewood 8,600 124 8,476 1% 3,633 78 3,555 111 Jersey County 2,857 0 2,857 0% 1,036 0 1,036 112 Fairview heights, O'Fallon 8,677 314 8,363 4% 3,732 314 3,417 113 Jo Daviess County 2,915 204 2,711 7% 1,278 0 1,278 114 Chicago: Portage Park 8,731 419 8,312 5% 4,419 79 4,340 115 Lincolnwood 8,960 659 8,301 7% 3,171 448 2,723 116 Perry County 2,662 0 2,662 0% 1,208 0 1,208 117 Alsip, Crestwood, Oak Forest 8,717 447 8,271 5% 3,247 445 2,802 118 Glendale Heights 10,380 2,112 8,268 20% 4,581 716 3,865 119 Wayne County 2,546 0 2,546 0% 1,211 0 1,211 120 Hickory Hills, Palos Park, Palos Heights 9,911 1,676 8,234 17% 4,355 1,074 3,282 121 Union County 2,427 0 2,427 0% 1,042 0 1,042 122 Chicago: Garfield Ridge, Clearing 8,492 325 8,167 4% 3,904 58 3,845 123 Old Mill Creek, Zion, Winthrop Harbor 8,136 0 8,136 0% 3,192 0 3,192 124 Mercer County 2,383 0 2,383 0% 1,062 0 1,062 125 Ford Heights, Chicago Heights 8,127 0 8,127 0% 3,394 0 3,394 77
. Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Level Percent of K-12 Demand Supply Level Percent of K-12 Demand 0% 31% 724 0 724 0% 19% 1,949 0 1,949 0% 50% 1% 41% 2,246 9 2,237 0% 25% 3,044 0 3,044 0% 34% 0% 42% 1,712 0 1,712 0% 19% 3,450 0 3,450 0% 39% 0% 40% 903 0 903 0% 26% 1,185 0 1,185 0% 34% 68% 35% 5,501 2,378 3,123 43% 36% 7,091 4,487 2,604 63% 30% 0% 46% 818 0 818 0% 24% 989 0 989 0% 29% 2% 53% 2,270 70 2,200 3% 25% 2,158 272 1,886 13% 22% 2% 56% 2,350 67 2,282 3% 26% 1,790 283 1,507 16% 17% 3% 41% 685 0 685 0% 22% 1,149 0 1,149 0% 37% 14% 55% 2,046 49 1,997 2% 23% 2,108 212 1,896 10% 22% 0% 50% 2,034 0 2,034 0% 24% 2,434 214 2,220 9% 26% 0% 41% 706 0 706 0% 24% 995 0 995 0% 34% 4% 52% 1,961 40 1,921 2% 22% 2,190 0 2,190 0% 26% 0% 41% 731 0 731 0% 25% 970 0 970 0% 33% 4% 44% 2,135 35 2,101 2% 25% 2,692 0 2,692 0% 31% 2% 42% 2,242 46 2,196 2% 26% 2,725 0 2,725 0% 32% 0% 36% 692 0 692 0% 24% 1,129 0 1,129 0% 40% 8% 41% 1,950 0 1,950 0% 23% 2,995 0 2,995 0% 36% 0% 47% 681 0 681 0% 25% 956 204 752 21% 28% 2% 52% 1,962 67 1,894 3% 23% 2,351 273 2,078 12% 25% 14% 33% 2,116 210 1,905 10% 23% 3,673 0 3,673 0% 44% 0% 45% 622 0 622 0% 23% 831 0 831 0% 31% 14% 34% 1,928 2 1,926 0% 23% 3,542 0 3,542 0% 43% 16% 47% 2,426 1,396 1,030 58% 12% 3,373 0 3,373 0% 41% 0% 48% 578 0 578 0% 23% 756 0 756 0% 30% 25% 40% 2,344 593 1,750 25% 21% 3,211 9 3,202 0% 39% 0% 43% 647 0 647 0% 27% 738 0 738 0% 30% 1% 47% 2,017 55 1,962 3% 24% 2,571 212 2,359 8% 29% 0% 39% 1,903 0 1,903 0% 23% 3,041 0 3,041 0% 37% 0% 45% 585 0 585 0% 25% 736 0 736 0% 31% 0% 42% 1,883 0 1,883 0% 23% 2,850 0 2,850 0% 35% Supply Level Percent of K-12 78
Grades K-12 (Overall) Grades K-5 Rank Study Area Demand Supply Level Demand Supply Low-Mid-Need Areas Moderate-Need Areas 126 Hancock County 2,364 0 2,364 0% 1,065 0 1,065 127 Tinley Park 8,009 26 7,982 0% 2,795 26 2,768 128 Waucanda, Mundelein, Island Lake 8,312 560 7,752 7% 3,319 338 2,982 129 Bond County 2,351 2 2,348 0% 1,106 1 1,104 130 Orland Park 8,172 541 7,631 7% 2,675 479 2,196 131 Chicago: Kenwood, Grand Boulevard, Hyde Park 7,938 351 7,587 4% 3,366 60 3,305 132 Douglas County 2,337 0 2,337 0% 1,037 0 1,037 133 Dolton, Riverdale 7,484 58 7,425 1% 3,273 8 3,265 134 Crawford County 2,300 0 2,300 0% 832 0 832 135 Harvard, Marengo, Huntley 8,172 833 7,339 10% 3,073 409 2,664 136 Franklin Park 7,292 3 7,289 0% 3,116 1 3,115 137 Warren County 2,297 0 2,297 0% 878 0 878 138 Chicago: Chatham, Greater Grand Crossing 7,671 391 7,280 5% 3,772 62 3,710 139 Massac County 2,454 195 2,259 8% 1,195 166 1,028 140 East St. Louis, Brooklyn, Fairmont City 7,125 0 7,125 0% 3,295 0 3,295 141 Chicago: Beverly, Morgan Park, Washington Heights 7,376 337 7,039 5% 3,280 51 3,229 142 Cass County 2,235 0 2,235 0% 1,029 0 1,029 143 Chicago: Edgewater, Uptown 7,288 309 6,979 4% 3,789 64 3,725 144 Crest Hill, Fairmont 6,890 22 6,869 0% 3,061 13 3,048 145 Richland County 2,225 0 2,225 0% 1,003 0 1,003 146 Chicago: Forest Glen, North Park 8,650 1,816 6,833 21% 4,085 1,060 3,025 147 Edgar County 2,202 0 2,202 0% 714 0 714 148 Chicago: West Englewood 7,172 344 6,828 5% 3,415 57 3,357 149 Romeoville 6,916 130 6,786 2% 3,061 65 2,996 150 De Witt County 2,137 10 2,126 0% 795 10 784 151 Chicago: Woodlawn, Washington Park 7,102 318 6,784 4% 3,339 54 3,285 152 Clark County 2,089 0 2,089 0% 769 0 769 153 Morton, Washington, Hopedale, Heritage Lake 9,895 3,168 6,727 32% 4,616 2,070 2,546 154 Chicago: Jefferson Park 6,963 340 6,624 5% 3,322 70 3,251 155 Mason County 2,083 0 2,083 0% 898 0 898 156 Chicago: Garfield Park 6,870 317 6,553 5% 3,501 53 3,449 79
. Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Level Percent of K-12 Demand Supply Level Percent of K-12 Demand 0% 45% 528 0 528 0% 22% 770 0 770 0% 33% 1% 35% 1,838 0 1,838 0% 23% 3,376 0 3,376 0% 42% 10% 38% 2,190 0 2,190 0% 28% 2,802 222 2,580 8% 33% 0% 47% 523 1 522 0% 22% 722 0 722 0% 31% 18% 29% 2,032 62 1,970 3% 26% 3,465 0 3,465 0% 45% 2% 44% 1,620 57 1,563 4% 21% 2,952 234 2,718 8% 36% 0% 44% 512 0 512 0% 22% 788 0 788 0% 34% 0% 44% 1,906 10 1,896 1% 26% 2,304 40 2,264 2% 30% 0% 36% 600 0 600 0% 26% 869 0 869 0% 38% 13% 36% 2,189 424 1,765 19% 24% 2,910 0 2,910 0% 40% 0% 43% 1,588 1 1,588 0% 22% 2,588 1 2,587 0% 35% 0% 38% 580 0 580 0% 25% 840 0 840 0% 37% 2% 51% 1,894 62 1,832 3% 25% 2,005 267 1,738 13% 24% 14% 46% 569 29 541 5% 24% 690 0 690 0% 31% 0% 46% 1,712 0 1,712 0% 24% 2,117 0 2,117 0% 30% 2% 46% 1,799 54 1,745 3% 25% 2,296 232 2,065 10% 29% 0% 46% 527 0 527 0% 24% 679 0 679 0% 30% 2% 53% 1,720 48 1,671 3% 24% 1,779 196 1,583 11% 23% 0% 44% 1,677 9 1,668 1% 24% 2,152 0 2,152 0% 31% 0% 45% 508 0 508 0% 23% 715 0 715 0% 32% 26% 44% 2,101 495 1,606 24% 23% 2,464 261 2,203 11% 32% 0% 32% 650 0 650 0% 29% 838 0 838 0% 38% 2% 49% 1,705 55 1,650 3% 24% 2,052 232 1,820 11% 27% 2% 44% 1,667 65 1,602 4% 24% 2,188 0 2,188 0% 32% 1% 37% 620 0 620 0% 29% 722 0 722 0% 34% 2% 48% 1,617 50 1,567 3% 23% 2,146 214 1,931 10% 28% 0% 37% 575 0 575 0% 28% 745 0 745 0% 36% 45% 38% 2,278 184 2,095 8% 31% 3,001 914 2,087 30% 31% 2% 49% 1,621 58 1,563 4% 24% 2,021 211 1,809 10% 27% 0% 43% 486 0 486 0% 23% 699 0 699 0% 34% 1% 53% 1,716 49 1,666 3% 25% 1,653 215 1,438 13% 22% Supply Level Percent of K-12 80
Grades K-12 (Overall) Grades K-5 Rank Study Area Demand Supply Level Demand Supply Low-Mid-Need Areas 157 Des Plaines 6,666 168 6,499 3% 3,025 44 2,981 158 Lawrence County 2,078 0 2,078 0% 985 0 985 159 Lyons, Riverside, Brookfield 7,324 828 6,496 11% 3,346 690 2,656 160 Piatt County 2,066 0 2,066 0% 772 0 772 161 Beecher, Peotone, Manhattan, Lakewood Shores 6,356 0 6,356 0% 2,332 0 2,332 162 Chicago: Englewood 6,642 291 6,351 4% 3,369 48 3,321 163 Pike County 2,011 0 2,011 0% 807 0 807 164 Glen Carbon, Edwardsville, Holiday Shores 6,321 0 6,321 0% 1,877 0 1,877 165 Clay County 2,002 0 2,002 0% 959 0 959 166 Oak Park 8,266 1,952 6,313 24% 3,867 1,951 1,916 167 Chicago: Austin 6,609 345 6,264 5% 3,518 60 3,458 168 Ford County 1,974 0 1,974 0% 736 0 736 169 Geneva, Batavia 10,615 4,402 6,214 41% 4,045 1,215 2,830 170 Lemont, Homer Glen 7,438 1,298 6,139 17% 2,776 0 2,776 171 Carroll County 2,010 107 1,903 5% 872 107 764 172 Mokena, New Lenox 6,173 41 6,132 1% 2,431 41 2,390 173 Greene County 1,867 0 1,867 0% 834 0 834 174 Rosemont, Park Ridge, O'Hare 6,160 68 6,093 1% 1,852 0 1,851 175 Addison 6,090 44 6,046 1% 2,736 33 2,703 176 White County 1,815 0 1,815 0% 765 0 765 177 Wheeling 7,401 1,387 6,014 19% 3,400 547 2,852 178 Johnson County 1,672 0 1,672 0% 775 0 775 179 West Chicago 6,971 1,063 5,908 15% 3,451 611 2,839 180 Chicago: Ashburn 6,216 312 5,904 5% 3,050 50 3,000 181 Moultrie County 1,625 0 1,625 0% 908 0 908 182 Naperville 22,004 16,214 5,791 74% 9,208 6,021 3,187 183 St. Charles, Campton Hills 10,296 4,543 5,753 44% 3,820 2,627 1,193 184 Marshall County 1,584 0 1,584 0% 741 0 741 185 Markham, Hazel Crest, Country Club Hills 5,581 0 5,581 0% 2,501 0 2,501 186 Cumberland County 1,504 0 1,504 0% 754 0 754 187 Bloomingdale 5,934 381 5,553 6% 2,014 249 1,765 188 Chicago: West Ridge 5,838 299 5,539 5% 2,832 58 2,774 81
. Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Level Percent of K-12 Demand Supply Level Percent of K-12 Demand 1% 46% 1,456 0 1,456 0% 22% 2,185 124 2,062 6% 32% 0% 47% 480 0 480 0% 23% 613 0 613 0% 29% 21% 41% 1,771 122 1,649 7% 25% 2,207 15 2,191 1% 34% 0% 37% 547 0 547 0% 26% 746 0 746 0% 36% 0% 37% 1,695 0 1,695 0% 27% 2,329 0 2,329 0% 37% 1% 52% 1,688 46 1,642 3% 26% 1,585 197 1,388 12% 22% 0% 40% 564 0 564 0% 28% 639 0 639 0% 32% 0% 30% 1,862 0 1,862 0% 29% 2,582 0 2,582 0% 41% 0% 48% 456 0 456 0% 23% 588 0 588 0% 29% 50% 30% 1,840 1 1,839 0% 29% 2,558 0 2,558 0% 41% 2% 55% 1,647 53 1,593 3% 25% 1,443 231 1,212 16% 19% 0% 37% 546 0 546 0% 28% 691 0 691 0% 35% 30% 46% 2,784 1,328 1,456 48% 23% 3,787 1,859 1,928 49% 31% 0% 45% 1,889 0 1,889 0% 31% 2,773 1,298 1,474 47% 24% 12% 40% 478 0 478 0% 25% 661 0 661 0% 35% 2% 39% 1,587 0 1,587 0% 26% 2,155 0 2,155 0% 35% 0% 45% 415 0 415 0% 22% 618 0 618 0% 33% 0% 30% 982 0 982 0% 16% 3,327 67 3,259 2% 53% 1% 45% 1,400 11 1,389 1% 23% 1,954 0 1,954 0% 32% 0% 42% 445 0 445 0% 25% 605 0 605 0% 33% 16% 47% 1,646 0 1,646 0% 27% 2,355 839 1,516 36% 25% 0% 46% 385 0 385 0% 23% 512 0 512 0% 31% 18% 48% 1,619 371 1,249 23% 21% 1,901 81 1,820 4% 31% 2% 51% 1,694 53 1,641 3% 28% 1,472 209 1,263 14% 21% 0% 56% 190 0 190 0% 12% 528 0 528 0% 32% 65% 55% 5,302 3,561 1,741 67% 30% 7,495 6,632 863 88% 15% 69% 21% 2,654 1,914 740 72% 13% 3,822 2 3,820 0% 66% 0% 47% 380 0 380 0% 24% 463 0 463 0% 29% 0% 45% 891 0 891 0% 16% 2,189 0 2,189 0% 39% 0% 50% 183 0 183 0% 12% 567 0 567 0% 38% 12% 32% 1,417 76 1,342 5% 24% 2,503 57 2,446 2% 44% 2% 50% 1,364 50 1,313 4% 24% 1,642 191 1,452 12% 26% Supply Level Percent of K-12 82
Grades K-12 (Overall) Grades K-5 Rank Study Area Demand Supply Level Demand Supply Low-Need Areas 189 Washington County 1,486 0 1,486 0% 554 0 554 190 Elmwood Park, River Grove 5,630 121 5,509 2% 2,424 22 2,402 191 Menard County 1,442 0 1,442 0% 516 0 516 192 Godfrey, Alton 5,272 0 5,272 0% 1,902 0 1,902 193 Mount Prospect 7,612 2,355 5,257 31% 3,117 1,368 1,749 194 Wabash County 1,346 0 1,346 0% 432 0 432 195 Chicago: South Shore 5,489 247 5,242 5% 2,460 43 2,416 196 Niles 5,712 512 5,200 9% 2,290 318 1,972 197 Hamilton County 1,312 0 1,312 0% 604 0 604 198 Rolling Meadows 8,069 3,105 4,964 38% 3,788 1,460 2,328 199 Jasper County 1,136 0 1,136 0% 537 0 537 200 Chicago: Norwood Park, Edison Park 6,040 1,168 4,872 19% 3,028 648 2,380 201 Prestbury, Kaneville, Elburn, Virgil 5,217 570 4,647 11% 2,374 237 2,137 202 Henderson County 1,011 0 1,011 0% 418 0 418 203 Forest Park, Maywood, River Forest 6,167 1,550 4,617 25% 2,816 868 1,948 204 Edwards County 999 0 999 0% 468 0 468 205 Hodgkins, La Grange, Western Springs 8,213 4,041 4,172 49% 3,435 2,604 831 206 Forest Lake, Kideer, Hawthorn Woods 8,031 3,865 4,166 48% 3,085 1,704 1,381 207 Alexander County 959 0 959 0% 548 0 548 208 Hillside 4,259 211 4,047 5% 2,031 0 2,031 209 Burr Ridge, Willowbrook, Darien 6,835 2,862 3,973 42% 2,435 1,079 1,356 210 Schuyler County 927 0 927 0% 326 0 326 211 Chicago: Rogers Park 4,101 226 3,874 6% 2,200 46 2,154 212 Pulaski County 875 0 875 0% 427 0 427 213 Elmhurst 7,834 4,218 3,615 54% 3,406 2,931 475 214 Westmont 8,377 5,052 3,325 60% 3,192 2,288 904 215 Scott County 836 0 836 0% 375 0 375 216 Arlington Heights 7,554 4,235 3,319 56% 3,208 2,212 996 217 Gallatin County 703 0 703 0% 355 0 355 218 Westchester 4,126 833 3,293 20% 1,733 404 1,329 219 North Chicago, Lake Bluff 4,923 1,659 3,264 34% 2,471 696 1,775 220 Brown County 675 0 675 0% 322 0 322 83
. Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Level Percent of K-12 Demand Supply Level Percent of K-12 Demand 0% 37% 275 0 275 0% 18% 657 0 657 0% 44% 1% 44% 1,295 19 1,276 1% 23% 1,911 79 1,831 4% 33% 0% 36% 382 0 382 0% 27% 543 0 543 0% 38% 0% 36% 1,375 0 1,375 0% 26% 1,995 0 1,995 0% 38% 44% 33% 1,868 53 1,814 3% 35% 2,627 934 1,694 36% 32% 0% 32% 381 0 381 0% 28% 532 0 532 0% 40% 2% 46% 1,180 39 1,141 3% 22% 1,849 164 1,684 9% 32% 14% 38% 1,292 193 1,099 15% 21% 2,130 1 2,129 0% 41% 0% 46% 333 0 333 0% 25% 376 0 376 0% 29% 39% 47% 1,840 811 1,029 44% 21% 2,441 834 1,607 34% 32% 0% 47% 124 0 124 0% 11% 474 0 474 0% 42% 21% 49% 1,335 342 993 26% 20% 1,676 177 1,499 11% 31% 10% 46% 1,271 239 1,032 19% 22% 1,573 94 1,478 6% 32% 0% 41% 235 0 235 0% 23% 358 0 358 0% 35% 31% 42% 1,428 460 968 32% 21% 1,922 222 1,701 12% 37% 0% 47% 242 0 242 0% 24% 289 0 289 0% 29% 76% 20% 1,925 1,429 496 74% 12% 2,854 9 2,845 0% 68% 55% 33% 1,976 768 1,208 39% 29% 2,971 1,393 1,577 47% 38% 0% 57% 140 0 140 0% 15% 271 0 271 0% 28% 0% 50% 1,027 0 1,027 0% 25% 1,200 211 989 18% 24% 44% 34% 1,702 602 1,100 35% 28% 2,698 1,182 1,517 44% 38% 0% 35% 256 0 256 0% 28% 345 0 345 0% 37% 2% 56% 910 35 875 4% 23% 991 145 845 15% 22% 0% 49% 202 0 202 0% 23% 246 0 246 0% 28% 86% 13% 1,863 1,286 577 69% 16% 2,564 2 2,563 0% 71% 72% 27% 2,128 1,337 791 63% 24% 3,057 1,427 1,630 47% 49% 0% 45% 191 0 191 0% 23% 270 0 270 0% 32% 69% 30% 1,735 1,117 618 64% 19% 2,610 905 1,705 35% 51% 0% 51% 157 0 157 0% 22% 190 0 190 0% 27% 23% 40% 1,147 310 838 27% 25% 1,245 119 1,126 10% 34% 28% 54% 1,146 418 728 36% 22% 1,306 545 761 42% 23% 0% 48% 145 0 145 0% 22% 207 0 207 0% 31% Supply Level Percent of K-12 84
Grades K-12 (Overall) Grades K-5 Rank Study Area Demand Supply Level Demand Supply Low-Need Areas 221 Libertyville 11,791 9,254 2,537 78% 4,700 3,540 1,160 222 Chicago: Mount Greenwood 3,427 1,028 2,399 30% 1,621 632 990 223 Calhoun County 672 0 672 0% 273 0 273 224 Chicago: Hegewisch, South Deering 2,237 73 2,164 3% 955 12 943 225 Putnam County 669 0 669 0% 206 0 206 226 Lake Forest, Highland Park 9,130 7,130 2,000 78% 3,384 2,204 1,180 227 Glenview 7,498 5,699 1,799 76% 2,448 2,030 418 228 Hardin County 602 0 602 0% 283 0 283 229 Buffalo Grove, Riverwoods 10,815 9,394 1,421 87% 4,525 3,796 729 230 Stark County 570 0 570 0% 52 0 52 231 Northbrook 6,255 5,398 857 86% 2,445 1,934 511 232 Wilmette 5,600 5,617-16 100% 2,612 2,679-68 233 Pope County 528 0 528 0% 236 0 236 234 Glencoe, Winnetka 4,984 5,068-84 102% 2,083 2,106-23 85
. Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Level Percent of K-12 Demand Supply Level Percent of K-12 Demand 75% 46% 2,967 1,820 1,147 61% 45% 4,124 3,895 229 94% 9% 39% 41% 769 280 490 36% 20% 1,036 117 919 11% 38% 0% 41% 134 0 134 0% 20% 265 0 265 0% 39% 1% 44% 516 12 504 2% 23% 766 49 717 6% 33% 0% 31% 224 0 224 0% 33% 239 0 239 0% 36% 65% 59% 2,344 1,490 854 64% 43% 3,402 3,436-34 101% N/A 83% 23% 2,181 1,020 1,162 47% 65% 2,868 2,649 219 92% 12% 0% 47% 147 0 147 0% 24% 173 0 173 0% 29% 84% 51% 2,628 2,185 443 83% 31% 3,663 3,414 249 93% 18% 0% 9% 192 0 192 0% 34% 326 0 326 0% 57% 79% 60% 1,578 1,297 281 82% 33% 2,232 2,167 65 97% 8% 103% N/A 1,482 1,426 55 96% 100% 1,507 1,511-4 100% N/A 0% 45% 131 0 131 0% 25% 161 0 161 0% 30% 101% N/A 1,404 1,462-57 104% N/A 1,496 1,500-3 100% N/A Supply Level Percent of K-12 86
APPENDIX B: SCHOOL DISTRICT EXPENDITURE CATEGORIZATION SCHEME 87
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