NIU P-20 -- Pre-School to Graduate School

The Illinois Learning Standards

In July 1997, the Illinois State Board of Education adopted the Illinois Learning Standards, one of the first states in the U.S. to do so. The Illinois Standards Project had begun in 1995 with the establishment of seven writing teams for English language arts, mathematics, science, social science, physical development/health, fine arts and foreign languages. National and state standards were consulted, as well as the1985 State Goals for Learning, and examples of Illinois schools’ own expectations for student learning. More than 270 Illinois educators, business people, and community members participated in the writing teams; more than 20,000 citizens provided input to the draft standards. The Illinois State Board distributed the Learning Standards widely and implementation began in classrooms in 1998.

Stringent criteria guided the writing of the goals, standards and benchmarks:

The standards and benchmarks must be clear and meaningful to students, parents, educators, business representatives and the community at large.
The standards and benchmarks should include an appropriate combination of knowledge and skills, not just facts alone or skills alone.
The standards and benchmarks should build upon and go beyond the basics within each of the academic disciplines.
The standards and benchmarks should be specific enough to convey what students should learn, but broad enough to allow for a variety of approaches to teaching, curriculum, course design and assessment.
The standards and benchmarks should be specific enough to be used in assessing progress and improving students’ learning.

The Illinois Learning Standards are content standards that describe “what” students should know and be able to do in grades K – 12. Each content standard includes 5 benchmarks that describe what students should know and be able to do at early elementary, late elementary, middle/junior high, early high school, and late high school.

In 2000, Illinois educators produced Performance Descriptors for each learning area to enhance, not replace, the Learning Standards. Indicating “how well” students perform at various points on an educational development continuum, they show how students can demonstrate mastery of progressively more difficult content and cognitive skills over 10 incremental stages throughout their K - 12 schooling.

Classroom assessments were developed in 2001 to accompany the Performance Descriptors. Over 400 Illinois teachers field tested 900 assessments and submitted and annotated student work as “meeting” or “exceeding” the standards.

The Learning Standards, Performance Descriptors, assessments and representative student work can be found on the ISBE website at www.isbe.state.il.us/ils/Default.htm