How to Tell Your Story - Annual Summative Designation in the 2025 Illinois Report Card

Oct 10, 2026

Uploaded by Noah

Guide for schools and districts on communicating their 2025 Illinois Report Card Annual Summative Designation. Explains who the priority audiences are, how to craft the three most important key messages, and which data to emphasize for accurate year-over-year comparisons. Provides suggested messaging for multiple designation scenarios (comprehensive, intensive, exiting, exemplary, commendable, and low proficiency cases) and recommends channels such as visuals, meetings, translated materials, press releases, social media, and videos. Includes key caution on proficiency benchmark recalibration and highlights Student Growth Percentile as a stable metric.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages3

Reading Time8 min

AccessFree to download

How to Tell Your Story

Who needs to know?

What is the most important thing to know?

How can we share information?

2025 ILLINOIS REPORT CARD TELL YOUR STORY OF STUDENT SUCCESS How to Tell Your Story The 2025 Illinois Report Card provides an opportunity for each school and district to tell its story – but what does that mean? Each school will receive a new Annual Summative Designation in 2025, as federally required. This guide showshow you can foster deeper conversations about what your designation means and engage your stakeholders in your school improvement efforts. 1. Who needs to know? Identify your target audiences – the primary groups of people who influence the success of your school improvement efforts, such as: • Teachers, principals, and school staff-primary change agents for student success and key messengers to parents and families • School board members-oversee personnel, budgets, and policies • Media-provide information to the broader community • Parents and families-partners in their children's education and in school improvement • Students-empowered to own their learning • Community partners and businesses-support school initiatives 2. What is the most important thing for people to know or understand? Consider these questions and then choose your top three key messages. • What questions will our target audiences ask about our data and designation? What do they care about? • How can we explain the new, right-sized proficiency benchmarks and their stronger alignment to college and career readiness expectations? • View the Communications Toolkit. • Do they know what the designation means? Check out these fact sheets: • Annual Summative Designations • Multiple Indicators of Student Success • What does our data say about our strengthsand areas for growth? Because the state has recalibrated its proficiency benchmarks to reflect a truer picture of student learning and readiness, 2025 proficiency rates should not be compared to prior years. Instead, your story of progress over time should focus on metrics that allow for apples-to-apples comparisons, such as the Student Growth Percentile, graduation rates, and chronic absenteeism, comparing 2025 data to 2024 and 2019 (pre-pandemic) . • What have we invested in improving over the past year? What instructional changes have we implemented? How can we use our Student Growth Percentile data to demonstrate progress? (Note: SGP is not affected by the recent proficiency benchmark changes and is the best measure for year-over-year academic comparisons). • What do we do now? [isbe](isbe.net/ilreportcard)[.net/ilreportcard](isbe.net/ilreportcard) September 2025 Consider these scenarios to help communicate your Annual Summative Designation. | Potential Scenario | Suggested Messaging | | --- | --- | | Targeted to Comprehensive | Our school improvement efforts did not produce the results we were hoping for in the prescribed timeline, but we have so much to be proud of. The new designation gives us more funding and learning opportunities and expands our ability to take a more holistic approach. | | Comprehensive to Intensive | Our school improvement efforts did not produce the results we were hoping for in the prescribed timeline, but we have so much to be proud of. The new designation does not instigate any radical changes. It allows us to build on our successes and build momentum toward what’s working with some additional supports from the state. Your partnership, feedback, and ideas are more important than ever. | | Exiting School
Improvement Status | Our designation this year is cause for celebration. We are proud to have sustained learning gains and to exit School Improvement Status. Your partnership was invaluable every step of the way. | | Exemplary to Commendable | The change in our designation is not cause for concern. We have so much to proud of. A new visual on the Illinois Report Card helps to explain the data behind the summative designation and shows just how close we were to the Exemplary category. | | Commendable or Exemplary wit

FAQs

Who are the target audiences schools should communicate with about the Annual Summative Designation?

Teachers, principals, and school staff; school board members; media; parents and families; students; and community partners and businesses.

Why should 2025 proficiency rates not be compared directly to prior years?

The state recalibrated proficiency benchmarks to reflect a truer picture of student learning and readiness, so apples-to-apples comparisons should focus on metrics like Student Growth Percentile, graduation rates, and chronic absenteeism.

Which metric is recommended for year-over-year academic comparisons?

Student Growth Percentile (SGP), since it is not affected by the recent proficiency benchmark changes.

Oct 10, 2026

Uploaded by Noah