In 2021, Illinois became the first state in the United States to require that K-12 students learn about Asian American history. Illinois achieved this when lawmakers passed House Bill 376 (H.B. 376), colloquially known as the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act. H.B. 376 received praise for being the first legislation…

The Illinois Evidence-Based Funding for Student Success Act (EBF), a comprehensive overhaul of the state's school funding formula, was signed into law in August 2017. The Act requires an overall increase of more than $7 billion in state education aid and sets 2027 as the deadline to reach full funding of the EBF formula. The Act also sets $350…

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is now more than twenty years beyond its inception when it was built on the concept that digital materials make learning content easy to reuse and share. This report discusses current legislative trends in OER and offers recommended OER practices for states.

In March 2020, COVID-19 resulted in school closures for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year across the nation. Because of the pandemic predictions regarding the 20202021 school year, concerns regarding curricular offerings and delivery surfaced quickly. A non-experimental quantitative comparative study was conducted in two neighboring…

Over the years, as states have sought to incorporate more inclusive and relevant academic standards and curriculum for K-12 students, they have interpreted ethnic studies in both broad and narrow terms. While most states use the term ethnic studies to describe their efforts to incorporate the knowledge and perspectives of traditionally excluded…

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is committed to the cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotional development of all children in Illinois. ISBE's Multilingual/Language Development Department is focused on ensuring that students with diverse linguistic repertoires and those who may benefit from additional support have equitable access to…

This Policy Snapshot provides examples of legislation in 13 states that have proposed or enacted legislation addressing the following principles of K-12 funding models: attendance and enrollment, revenue, and equity-based initiatives. All 50 states allocate K-12 funding in different ways. Refer to this two-page reference guide, which defines and…

Finding funds to build and renovate facilities is a major hurdle for public charter schools because most state laws do not provide charter schools with the full amount of state and local funding that other public schools receive. Although an increasing number of states are passing laws to address charter school facility funding gaps, inequities…

Charter schools are public schools governed by an independent board of directors that come into existence through a contract with an authorized public chartering agency. This report, known as the Illinois Charter School Biennial Report, provides legislators, policymakers, educators, and the general public with information regarding the state of…

Illinois K-12 public school funding has long been characterized by large inter-district disparities in per-pupil expenditures. A primary reason for this characterization was the Illinois legislature's heavy reliance on local property tax within the various school funding formulas historically used to determine school revenues. The heavy reliance…

"Investing in Illinois' Students: An Analysis of Evidence-Based Funding and the Path to Equity, Student Success, and Long-Term COVID-19 Recovery" shares new analyses on the impact of EBF on K-12 education resource equity and remaining gaps between current funding levels and full, adequate funding. The data are striking and underscore the…

Emerging practices in both K-12 and higher education hold great promise in the establishment of equity frameworks. The use of finely disaggregated data, the effort to track additional student groups, and related work, all help to establish policies and tools to monitor the impact of reform efforts to address inequities. State programs and…

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is urged to submit a report to the General Assembly by December 31, 2021, with information on the reviewed areas and recommendations on how to streamline the school data reporting and collecting systems of the State of Illinois. ISBE supports more than 200 software applications that were created in…

With the federal government's expanding role in K-12 public education, this study examines how the government's role led to the passage of the Illinois Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA). PERA made changes to Article 24A of the School Code, specifically the section that deals with teacher performance evaluation. PERA created a public school…

In Illinois, Senate Bill 100 was known in the statutes as Public Act 99-0456, took effect September, 15, 2016. Illinois State Senator Kimberly Lightford and Illinois State Representative William Davis both sponsored Senate Bill 100. Senator Lightford said, "We're moving toward a disciplinary system that prioritizes educating students by…