The Illinois State Board of Education is releasing preliminary results from the new "PARCC" test, which was developed to assess how much students are learning.
The PARCC test replaces the I-SAT's for grade schoolers and the Prairie State Achievement Exam for 11th graders.
Early scores show only about one third of students met or exceeded expectations in the English and Language Arts section...and a little more than a quarter passed Math.
State schools superintendent Tony Smith says they knew the numbers would be low as students adjust to the new test. He says eventually it will be a good tool for measuring a student's progress.
"The whole purpose of this is to get this data and this information into the hands of parents and teachers to support their students. I'm a parent myself, I want to know what my kids need, how I can help them. This data is gonna be really helpful."
Nancy Mundschenk is director of the Teacher Education Program at SIU-Carbondale. She says when examining results like this, it's important to remember they shouldn't be used to make broad assessments of the state's educational system.
"No testing expert, no assessment expert, no educational expert, would ever say that there is a single data point, a single test, a single measurement that captures all that we need to capture."
The data only includes those who took the test online, which is about 75 percent of students statewide. Scores by school and by individual student are not available yet.
Superintendent Smith is planning a series of community events to help teachers and families understand their kids' scores.
