Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.
llinois lawmakers are proposing a change to state law that would no longer require school districts to use students’ test scores in teacher evaluations.
Senate Bill 28, if approved, would roll back changes made 15 years ago that were aimed at improving teacher evaluation systems amid a push by the federal government under the Obama administration to link teacher quality to students’ success in the classroom.
Democratic state Sens. Kimberly Lightford, the Senate majority leader who represents neighborhoods on Chicago’s west side and western suburbs, and Meg Loughran Cappel, who represents Plainfield and surrounding suburbs, are co-sponsoring the measure, which would leave it up to districts to decide whether to link evaluations to student growth.
The bill passed out of committee with no discussion Tuesday afternoon. According to the Illinois General Assembly’s website, nearly 400 proponents, including the Illinois Educators Association, Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois Principal Association, and Illinois Stand for Children have signed witness slips in support of the change. There were only 11 opponents and two with no position, notably one from the Chicago Public Schools.
If the bill is passed into law, changes would take effect July 1, 2025.
Lightford was a part of the legislative push to require schools to tie teacher evaluations to student performance in 2010.
At that time, the Obama administration encouraged states to make changes to their teacher evaluations by throwing federal funding into the mix. Illinois requires up to 30% of an educator’s evaluation be based on student growth in most cases, as outlined by the Illinois State Board of Education.
In recent years, several states have stopped tying teacher evaluations to student performance, signaling a change in attitude towards the policy.
In 2024, the Illinois State Board of Education commissioned a report from the American Institutes for Research, or AIR, a nonpartisan research organization, on the state’s teacher evaluation policy. The report noted that other factors can affect a student’s learning “outside of teacher’s control such as family issues, health, or access to resources.” The report recommended that the state either eliminate the use of student test scores or reduce the percentage of student test scores on an educators’ overall evaluation.
Alison Maley, government and public relations director for Illinois Principals Association, one of the organizations supporting the proposal, noted that over the years, she has heard many educators say the student test scores component of the evaluation system is burdensome for both teachers and principals and has not been an effective metric to use.
“Teachers have to come up with all of these artifacts that demonstrate student growth in addition to what they are already doing, aligned with the frameworks that are in place in many districts to manage these teacher evaluations,” said Maley.
Teacher evaluations are sticking point in CTU contract talks
Paul Zavitkovsky, an assessment specialist at the Center for Urban Education Leadership at the University of Illinois Chicago, agrees that student test scores are problematic to use when it comes to teacher evaluations because large scale assessments are not precise enough.
“In almost all cases, large scale standardized tests are designed to measure generic curriculum — the stuff that gets taught in most places across the country at a particular grade level,” said Zavitkovsky. “They can’t really be very precise and measure the specific kinds of growth that an individual district’s curriculum calls for.”
Chicago uses Recognizing Educators Advancing Chicago’s Students, or REACH, a district-developed test for its teacher evaluations that gives teachers an overall rating based 70% on classroom observations by administrators and 30% on student growth as measured by a test given at the beginning and end of the school year.
That system — and the tests that teachers must give to measure student growth — have become a sticking point in contract negotiations between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union.
Kurt Hilgendorf, legislative coordinator for CTU, said the union’s position on REACH is that the exam and the state law that created it need revisions.
“We are trying to ensure that [teacher evaluations] are fair, that they provide useful feedback to the practitioners, that they are free of racial bias, and that they actually aren’t burdensome,” said Hilgendorf, “so that the best parts of improving educators’ practice — the feedback and the opportunity to reflect— that those things are part of the evaluation system.”
Racial bias has been the main criticism from the union over the years and research has backed their claims. A study from 2020 found that Black educators who taught in high-poverty schools were more likely to receive lower teacher evaluation scores than their white colleagues.
According to CTU, Chicago Public Schools has agreed to address racial disparities in teacher evaluations. In CTU’s roadmap to a contract settlement, the union is still pushing for a three-year evaluation cycle for tenured proficient educators and “joint legislative advocacy to abolish REACH.”
More states are turning away from requirement
Across the nation, states have moved away from including test scores into their teacher evaluations. As of 2022, only 30 states continue to require test scores to be included in teacher evaluation, down from 43 in 2015, according to a report from the National Council on Teacher Quality.
In 2022, Colorado revised its teacher evaluation laws to reduce the student growth requirement from 50% to 30% of an educator’s overall rating. In 2023, Michigan removed a requirement that student test scores make up 40% of an educator’s overall score. New Jersey put together a task force in 2024 to look into its evaluation system after educators urged lawmakers to make a change to their system.
“Research has found that the best evaluation systems are ones that use multiple different measures of teacher qualities, so incorporating things like observations of teachers, student surveys, and then also objective data on student growth is really important,” said Hannah Putman, managing director of research at the National Council on Teacher Quality. “Those are the systems that are going to give you the most consistent and reliable ratings and ones that really get at the heart of which teachers are doing well by their students.”
Effective teachers play a role in student success
Lauren Sartain, a professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an affiliated researcher with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, has studied teacher evaluation systems in Chicago since 2008. She said if Illinois makes student growth metrics optional, it won’t be “a huge loss, necessarily,” and it could “give teachers and students time back” for instruction, not testing.
“Teaching is a really complex task, and there are lots of things that happen in the classroom that aren’t necessarily reflected by test score growth,” Sartain said.
Past research by Sartain and others has found a slight positive correlation between test scores and teacher quality. In Chicago, test scores went up after the new evaluation system was fully implemented in 2012-13 and Sartain said “it also had the effect of removing really, really low-performing teachers from the classroom.”
But the majority of teachers still get high marks, and Sartain said there’s work to be done to improve the classroom observation process.
“The power is in these conversations between principals and teachers about what good instructional practice looks like,” Sartain said. “The more it’s taken out of this hyper-evaluative framework, it’s easier to have those honest conversations with your principal, who is your supervisor.”
Whatever changes Illinois lawmakers decide to make, Sartain said it’s important to remember that teachers play a key role in student success.
“Having a great teacher can make a really, really big difference for [students] that translates into their outcomes into adulthood,” she said. “Supporting teachers and helping them improve can be like a great equalizer.”
Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.
Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.
