Illinois’ top education official has a message for companies selling curricula and learning resources in his state: Your products should be robust when it comes to diversity and equity.
For years, Illinois has been culturally responsive in the area of K-12 curriculum.
But providers of academic resources might need to step up efforts to keep pace with the state’s appetite for learning materials that affirm students’ diverse backgrounds and perspectives.
“We want to make sure students see themselves in all our curriculum. We need materials that uplift student groups of all identities,” state Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders told EdWeek Market Brief in an interview. “And you don’t typically see that in a lot of the textbooks being published right now.”
- New Funding for Education: The newly approved, $8.6 billion budget includes $350 million for school, with support for expanded access to preschool, teacher recruitment, equity in computer science programs, and more.
- New Direction in Reading: The state last approved a policy requiring the board of education to develop a plan for research-based reading instruction, and a new curriculum rubric for schools to evaluate reading resources and develop materials for teachers. The plan does not require districts to buy new curriculum, but the policy will be implemented in schools for the first time this coming year.
- An Emphasis on Student Well-Being: The state, and local school districts, have supported social-emotional learning. This year, state lawmaker also approved a measure requiring the state board of education to develop a mental health screening for K-12 students.
- Expanded Preschool: Lawmakers added $75 million to expand access to preschool for economically disadvantaged children and families.
- Career-technical education. The state’s new budget includes a $10 million increase in support for CTE.
Illinois’ commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is just one major factor vendors need to consider when doing business in the state.
With its enrollment ranking in the top five nationally at about 1.8 million students, Illinois is one of the biggest K-12 markets in the country. It includes a true mega-district in the Chicago Public Schools, one of the largest in the country with roughly 322,000 students.
As such, Illinois is a market that presents ample opportunities for education companies — if they’re responsive to its school districts’ needs.
State lawmakers almost every year since 2017 have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding into K-12, as part of a long-term plan to equitably fund Illinois’ more than 850 school districts.
And the state is currently undergoing big changes to how students are taught to read by adopting a new literacy plan that aligns with researched-backed curriculum, a move expected to potentially drive new curriculum purchasing and demand for professional development.
EdWeek Market Brief regularly publishes analyses of important state markets — those that matter to education companies either because of their size or because their policies signal a shift in district demands reflective of the nation as a whole.
The stories examine changes in policy and purchasing priorities in those states. Recent stories have looked at the markets in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, California, and Florida.
However, as school districts in Illinois prepare for a new academic year, they are facing tight finances in parts of the state, even with increases to K-12 funding, along with ongoing teacher shortages. They are also bracing for the winding down of federal emergency aid at the end of this year.
EdWeek Market Brief recently spoke to state and local education leaders, and to organizations representing K-12 interests across Illinois to get a sense for how state policies and other dynamics will affect purchasing, school district demands, and classroom practices.
They said major spending priorities for Illinois schools over the next few years will include efforts to bolster social-emotional learning and implement a new evidence-based literacy plan. The state will also forge ahead with COVID-era learning recovery, though some learning-loss efforts such as tutoring programs funded with stimulus dollars are being scaled back across the state, as they are in other states across the country.
A New Approach for Literacy Instruction
Last year, the state approved a law requiring the Illinois State Board of Education to develop a comprehensive literacy plan based on researched-backed instruction. The state also required a new curriculum rubric for schools to evaluate their reading lesson plans, and professional development opportunities for teachers.
The literacy policy is designed to help pre-K-12 educators teach reading using evidence-based and developmentally appropriate practice. In taking that step, Illinois officials became one of dozens of states to overhauled its laws or policies on reading instruction over the last decade.
I fully believe that there'll be an uptick in curriculum purchases. [School districts] are really going to be closely examining their literacy curriculum and resources.
Finalized in early 2024, the new literacy plan will be used by Illinois school districts for the first time in the upcoming school year. The legislature approved $3 million this year to help implement the plan statewide.
It does not require districts to buy new curriculum or instructional materials for educators.
But many districts will likely refresh their reading curriculum in the next couple of years, in part because of the new literacy plan, Sanders said.
“I fully believe that there’ll be an uptick in curriculum purchases,” he said. As the comprehensive literacy plan gets rolled out, the superintendent said, school systems " are really going to be closely examining their literacy curriculum and resources.”
It’s not clear how many districts in Illinois may need to buy new curriculum so that their literacy programs are aligned with the state’s new push toward to create an evidence-based reading plan.
However, Science of Reading Illinois, a nonprofit group advocating for evidence-based literacy practices, used data from 750 school districts in the state to map which districts are using reading curriculum in grades K-3 that “meets expectations” for an alignment to college and career-ready standards. Its metric was designated by EdReports, a nonprofit that reviews and ranks the quality of instructional materials.
About half of the districts — 49 percent — that Science of Reading Illinois gathered data on through open records requests were using a reading curriculum that EdReports had deemed “meets expectations.” Nearly a third of those 750 districts — about 31 percent — were using resources ranked by EdReports as partially meeting or not meeting expectations.
That could signal that hundreds of districts across Illinois could be in the market to upgrade.
Join Us for EdWeek Market Brief's Fall In-Person Summit
In the Springfield Public School District 186, a system of roughly 13,000 students in the central part of the state, district leaders recently purchased a K-8 reading curriculum with federal stimulus money.
The district wanted to make sure it had a curriculum in place that emphasized areas the state is requiring districts to focus on in reading instruction, said Superintendent Jennifer Gill.
“They want the curriculum to align to the science of reading, and the use of phonics and the use of building background knowledge for students,” she said. “All of those are really important pieces that may have been missing during an era where you were guided to teach a little differently than we are now.”
And in the Peoria Public Schools District 150, district leaders built a new literacy framework several years ago and also purchased new curriculum at that time.
So when the state announced its new literacy plan last year, the 13,000-student district simply “tweaked and added” some pieces to its K-2 reading materials and did not have to do a complete overhaul, said Sandra Wilson, an acting administrator at the Peoria district who used to be its assistant superintendent of curriculum and assessment.
“We’ve just been honing in on those kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade teachers to really strengthen their skills and focus heavy on PD,” she said
A Boost for Funding
Illinois’ public school districts will receive $8.6 billion in state funding next year, an increase of $350 million, or roughly 4 percent. Of that, $300 million goes directly to districts, and $50 million is used for property tax relief grants.
Up until 2017, Illinois had consistently funded K-12 education at a flat level or even cut dollars that districts were receiving. And up until then, Illinois had traditionally relied on local property taxes to fund most educational spending.
That led to inequitable funding for districts with low levels of property wealth.
But seven years ago, state lawmakers overhauled how districts are funded, and put in place a new funding formula meant to more equitably fund schools. The goal was to gradually bring all districts up to an “adequate” level of funding, and to fully fund Illinois public schools by 2027.
With the exception of 2021, the state has allocated more money to school districts — around $350 million a year — every year since the new funding formula was put in place. Since then, districts have received almost $2 billion more in funding from the state.
By and large, the formula has helped districts tremendously, in particular impoverished school systems.
When Illinois enacted its Evidence-Based Funding formula in 2017, 160 of the state’s 852 districts were funded at less than 60 percent “adequacy,” said Robin Steans, president of the advocacy group Advance Illinois. Now, she said, there are no districts at that threshold anymore.
For the Rockford School District 205, a system of about 27,000 students in the northern part of the state, a $10 million budget deficit projected last winter was eventually reshaped into a balanced budget, said Greg Brown, the district’s chief financial officer and treasurer.
But he’s already worried about the district’s budget for the next two school years because of how the state funding formula works.
Rockford — and other districts around the state — are receiving windfalls in funding from a tax paid by corporations called the Corporate Personal Property Replacement Taxes. That money counts as local revenue and affects what the districts receive in funding from the state’s evidence-based formula.
SEL and equity are part of our DNA. It’s not something special. It’s just how we operate.
“We were getting about $12 million a year in tier funding from the evidence-based formula, and because of that rapid spike in the corporate personal property replacement tax receipts, we went all the way down to $3 million,” he said. “So that was about a $9 million haircut overnight.”
The Peoria school system is currently operating at a surplus, but Superintendent Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat said her district is also being affected by the corporate tax receipts and is projecting a possible deficit in the near future.
In some cases, district budgets are being squeezed by inflation, which has affected the cost of everything from campus renovations to buses.
The Springfield school district is running a slight budget deficit for the upcoming school year, mostly related to teacher salary increases and costs of goods, said Gill, the district’s superintendent.
And with federal emergency funds running out, Chicago Public Schools is projecting a deficit of around $390 million. The district hasn’t finalized its budget yet, but has said it expects to increase the number of teachers, and special education positions, even with the massive deficit.
Bastion of Social-Emotional Learning
At a time when some communities are finding reasons to oppose social-emotional learning, state and local officials in Illinois are embracing it.
In Peoria, the district is working to embed SEL into every classroom and almost every lesson as part of its broader strategic plan, said Desmoulin-Kherat, the district’s superintendent. To do that, the district has adopted a comprehensive SEL-focused solution called 7 Mindsets, she said.
“SEL and equity are part of our DNA,” Desmoulin-Kherat said. “It’s not something special. It’s just how we operate.”
Gill, the superintendent of the Springfield district, said administrators and educators have been provided with resources and guidance from the state to move forward with SEL efforts. The state, she said, gives students up to five mental health days that don’t count toward sick days.
In her district, there are “peace rooms” in each high school staffed with a clinician from one of the school system’s behavioral health centers.
“That’s how far in the other direction we are politically on that topic,” compared to some other big states, Gill said.
In some states, Republican politicians and members of the community have sought to limit schools’ ability to use SEL. In Florida, for instance, the state’s education commissioner warned districts against using an SEL curriculum he claimed was “divisive and discriminatory.”
There is a body of research showing a connection between SEL and improved student academic outcomes and behavior.
The commitment to SEL is evident in the Chicago Public Schools, which has integrated SEL into its university pre-K-12 curriculum called Skyline, as Cynthia Treadwell, the system’s executive director of social-emotional learning, explained in a recent interview with EdWeek Market Brief.
Even before the pandemic, the district had established a standalone K-8 SEL curriculum.
“That will not go away,” Treadwell said, adding that the district is going to “really embed SEL into our everyday classroom, into our curriculum and things of that nature ... As we’re thinking about strategy for the next few years, SEL has a major stake in that work.”
During the most recent legislative session, lawmakers in Illinois approved a bill that requires the state board of education to develop a screening for mental health care for K-12 students.
Seventeen states over the past few years have approved policies restricting lessons on race- and gender-focused topics, and some have made it easier for local communities to restrict books. Illinois lawmakers took the opposite step last year: Approving legislation that they said made the state the first in the nation to outlaw book bans.
“We allow teachers to teach. We do not restrict what they teach. We do not ban books,” said Sanders, the state schools chief. “We try to make this a place where teachers feel that they can own their profession.”
