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Harvey Smith
Harvey Smith

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News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

November 8, 2005

NIU's Interactive Illinois Report Card
improves schools by helping teachers, parents
view trends, understand assessment data

New IIRC tool saves time, money for principals
creating mandatory school improvement plans

DeKalb — Data lives and breathes, long after school boards publicly release the Illinois School Report Cards for their districts.

For parents, students, teachers, principals, district administrators and taxpayers, the plentiful treasure chests of knowledge contained in the report cards – and plenty of numbers from years past – are available year-round through the Interactive Illinois Report Card.

Created by researchers at Northern Illinois University in partnership with the Illinois State Board of Education, the IIRC (http://iirc.niu.edu) offers a richly dynamic, interactive and comparative resource that presents a vast array of information on schools and their academic performance in an easily navigated site.

“We've received a lot of recognition for being a really useful source of information on K-12 school performance in Illinois, and we've done it through partnering with the State Board and numerous school districts through workshops and focus groups. We've benefited enormously from the input of teachers and administrators and customized it for them,” said Harvey Smith, the project's director from the NIU Department of History. “Our goal here is really all about improving schools by using the assessment data as information that empowers teachers rather than information that just punishes them.”

The instrument compiles data received from the annual ISBE school report cards with numbers from previous years to provide longitudinal tracking and provides a picture of how Illinois schools are progressing toward compliance with the federal “No Child Left Behind” legislation.

Colorful graphics quickly show whether a school is “recognized” for compliance or whether it is on an academic warning list or an “early” warning list. It also allows users to break down standardized test score data by subgroups such as gender, ethnicity and income.

A key feature of the IIRC is its ability to compare schools head-to-head and side-by-side

in any of a variety of categories, including student test performance, per-pupil spending, ethnic and racial diversity, enrollment, teacher qualifications, average salaries and levels of tax support. Data is presented in easy to understand charts and graphs.

New this year is a look at how cohorts of students performed on standardized testing as third-graders, fifth-graders and eighth-graders.

“Next year, there is going to be an extension of the assessment to more grades and a revised set of tests will be introduced. They'll be testing grades three through eight, as well as in high school, focusing on reading and mathematics,” Smith said. “We will help building toward that and helping teachers and schools prepare for a smooth transition.”

Meanwhile, principals who are required by law to file school improvement plans will find that the IIRC can simplify a once-dreaded task.

Illinois e-Plans, another new feature of the IIRC, provides a toolkit that significantly streamlines the process of submitting the plans. The program automatically plugs in required data, and the program prompts users to write specific plans with reminders of the local school deficiencies they must address.

Administrators who use the tool will save time and money for their districts. A new progress tracker helps local improvement teams figure out what work is completed and what work remains. Also, different people can work on different parts of the plan and feed their data into a Web-based template that is password-protected. Plans are stored on a secure server at NIU.

“All too often, we use data to characterize schools without providing support to improve students,” Smith said. “Having said that, assessment information is important. We can't improve without knowing how things stand.”

In addition to providing data on Illinois schools, the IIRC is also a rich resource for links to information on standardized tests (including sample test items), state education standards, accountability standards and much more. Students even can find links that will help them understand and prepare for tests.

Other IIRC partners include the NIU College of Education, the NIU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and University Outreach. 

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