LTHS Scores Better Than They Look: Official

LA GRANGE, IL – Lyons Township High School should give better context for its student performance measures such as SAT scores, an official said this week.

Board member Tim Albores noted that 55 percent of the high school's juniors last year met state standards on the English language arts part of the SAT. Meanwhile, 54 percent met the mark in math.

He said those numbers may appear to be bad, but that the high school is in the 98th percentile of the state's high schools.

"Those messages are important for us to be sharing with the community because they look at that and they say 56 percent is an F," he said.

Relatively wealthy schools such as Lyons Township nearly always perform much better than statewide averages.

With the SAT, for instance, 32 percent of juniors statewide met the English language arts standards last year, compared with 36 percent before the pandemic.

While Albores wants administrators to compare local numbers to state averages, not everyone feels the same way.

Until a couple of years ago, Elmhurst School District 205's administrators would publicly compare its students' performance with those of similarly wealthy schools. Now, the district uses statewide averages as a contrast. And Elmhurst, like Lyons Township, far exceeds those numbers.

In 2021, an Elmhurst board member said he wished the district would not compare to state or national averages.

"I think a lot of people bristle when we talk about how we're above the national average because I think our community's expectations are far higher than that," member Jim Collins said at a school board meeting.

At this week's Lyons Township meeting, Kristine Zieman, the school's coordinator of assessment, said Illinois sets the highest bar for gauging student proficiency.

"If our students were to go to another state and hit their bar, we would see a much higher rate because Illinois sets the bar so much higher than surrounding states," she said.