Schools
Is Elmhurst D205 'Fully Rebounded' From Pandemic?
Local students' academic performance shows a rebound, with exceptions.
ELMHURST, IL – The superintendent of Elmhurst School District 205 said Wednesday that local students' academic performance has "fully rebounded" since before the pandemic.
In many ways, the statistics bear that out, with exceptions.
At a school board meeting, Superintendent Keisha Campbell pointed to a study by Harvard and Stanford, which analyzed 8,000 school districts in 30 states from 2019 to 2023.
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Based on that study, she said District 205 students have outpaced their peers in math by one-third of a grade level since 2019. In English language arts, they are 1.6 grade levels ahead, she said.
The gains, Campbell said, are being seen across various demographic groups.
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"We are very pleased with the results, but we are not settled," she said
She said the rebound resulted from the district's "intentional" work.
A few months ago, the district received good news on students' scores on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, which covers third through eighth grades.
Last year, 61 percent of Elmhurst's students met state standards on the English language arts part of the test, up from 51 percent in 2019, according to the Illinois Report Card.
On math, their scores edged up by half a percentage point since 2019, to 52.2 percent.
Low-income students were up in English language arts and down in math since 2019.
Black students saw improvement in English language arts on the assessment, with 33 percent meeting standards, up from 23 percent in 2019. Last year, 17 percent of black students met standards in math, down from 27 percent.
Hispanics stayed about the same in math, but increased a few percentage points in English language arts, to 36 percent.
Meanwhile, the SAT for juniors remains the biggest hurdle for District 205.
In 2023, 55 percent of York High School juniors met state standards, down from 65 percent before the pandemic.
In math, 53 percent of students reached the benchmark last year, down from 63 percent in 2019.
Such scores have been declining statewide.
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