The children took the tests.
Now the adults are posting the trophies.
Every fall, when Illinois releases its school report cards, school social-media pages light up with congratulations. Exemplary! We're proud! Look what our school accomplished!
And the schools that didn't receive the label everybody wanted? They have explanations to write, improvement conversations to hold, and people wondering what they'll do differently next year.
Before we celebrate or apologize, could we ask a more basic question?
Exemplary at what?
I grew up in Maroa, Illinois. Friday nights were football nights. We knew who won because there was a scoreboard. We kept score in basketball, too. And in scholastic bowl, debate, music competitions, and all the other places children discovered what they could do.
Nobody walked out of a football game thinking the winning team must also have the best readers, artists, scientists, and future parents in town.
That would be ridiculous.
But put a label on a school, and suddenly people treat it as an answer to a much bigger question: Which school is better?
A school designation is not a measure of everything a school does.
Illinois released its 2026 report cards on October 30. This year the state introduced Profiles of Performance, a new accountability framework with clearly defined criteria. Under the previous approach, roughly 10 percent of schools were classified Exemplary. Under the new approach, 28.3 percent met the Exemplary criteria.
That doesn't mean the same schools suddenly became nearly three times as effective. It means the classification system changed. That may be an improvement over a system that restricted the top category to a fixed share of schools. But it should remind every parent not to confuse the label with the underlying story.
And let's be fair about what Illinois measures. It isn't only one reading test. The system considers academic proficiency, student growth, graduation rates, attendance, English learner progress, and climate survey participation, among other distinctions built into the framework.
That information can matter. I want to know whether children can read, whether they can do math, and whether they're learning more than they knew before.
But a collection of indicators is still a collection of indicators. It is not the complete story of a school, and it is certainly not the complete story of a child.
Here's the part I keep coming back to as a dad who used to be a principal.
The tests are administered to children. The public judgment lands on the adults and institutions. And then the consequences can come right back to the children.
Adults have to convince students that these assessments matter. In some schools that means celebrations, prizes, or pizza parties. In other places, low performance can mean additional assessments or intervention periods. Depending on local scheduling choices, students may lose time they otherwise would have spent in electives, physical education, or other activities they love.
Those practices are not universal and are not all required by the state. They are decisions adults make in response to the demands they face.
But that is exactly why we should examine them.
A student can leave testing week with no better understanding of what the numbers mean, yet discover that those numbers have helped determine how much of the next school year will be spent in intervention.
Maybe that intervention is excellent. Maybe it changes that child's life. If so, show us the evidence.
But if the solution to disappointing results is another assessment, another purchased program, another tracking system, and another lost opportunity, shouldn't somebody ask whether the response actually helps?
Some Illinois accountability classifications carry formal school-improvement requirements and access to targeted supports or funds. That doesn't mean every school with an ordinary designation must buy a new product or administer more tests. It means certain results can initiate plans, interventions, and spending decisions that deserve public scrutiny.
And those decisions are where the real story begins.
Who chose the intervention?
Who gets paid to provide it?
What is the cost in dollars, teacher time, and the child's school day?
What did the district stop doing to make room for it?
And what evidence will tell us whether it worked?
If I see an Exemplary post, I don't assume the school is bad. I hope the teachers and students have plenty to be proud of.
If I see a school with a lower designation, I don't assume the teachers failed. I want to know where those children started, what they needed, what they learned, and what the school did for them.
That is the distinction I wish we would make more often.
We are good at measuring certain things about children. We are much less willing to ask what our institutions contributed, what opportunities they provided, and what opportunities they took away.
Did a child become a stronger reader? Good. How?
Did a teacher help a student discover a talent for music, mechanics, art, or science? That matters, too.
Did the school trust a teacher's judgment when the program wasn't working? Did anyone notice when a child needed a different approach?
And when the results disappointed us, did we help the child—or did we simply make the child spend more time helping the adults improve the numbers?
So before another school posts its designation as a verdict on the whole institution, I'd like one simple thing.
Tell families what the school actually did for the children inside it.
Celebrate that. Explain that. Measure that as carefully as you can.
And when the state hands you a label, don't let it end the conversation.
Let it start the questions.
The kids took the tests.
The adults got the trophies.
Now let's find out what the kids actually got.
